He’s not just a retired Marine general but a man who knows the terrible personal consequences of war and who is not afraid to face them.

He also knows that protecting the homeland is about more than just deportation and building walls but winning hearts and minds in the Muslim world. Little wonder that anti-immigrant groups already dislike him.

But they cannot quibble with this Irish Catholic soldier’s knowledge and insight. This is a man who has witnessed first hand the pain and glory of war.

As Kevin Cullen pointed out in the Boston Globe, in 2010 Kelly’s son, First Lieutenant Robert Kelly, was killed when he stepped on a landmine while leading a platoon of Marines on a patrol in Afghanistan. He was 29.

Four days later Kelly, a Boston native, made an emotional speech to former soldiers at a Veteran’s Day event in a ballroom convention center in New Orleans, but never mentioned his son’s passing.

Instead, he focused on the shared sacrifice and duty all soldiers signed up to when they enlisted and the challenges all Americans face.

“As a nation, we were scared like we had not been scared for generations,” he said.

“Parents hugged their children to gain as much as to give comfort. Strangers embraced in the streets, stunned and crying on one another’s shoulders, seeking solace as much as to give it.

“Instantaneously, American patriotism soared not ‘as the last refuge’ as our national cynical class would say, but in the darkest times Americans seek refuge in family, and in country, remembering that strong men and women have always stepped forward to protect the nation when the need was dire, and it was so God awful dire that day and remains so today.

“There was, however, a small segment of America that made very different choices that day, actions the rest of America stood in awe of on 9/11 and every day since. The first were our firefighters and police, their ranks decimated that day as they ran towards not away from danger and certain death. They were doing what they’d sworn to do, ‘protect and serve’ and went to their graves having fulfilled their sacred oath.

“Then there was your Armed Forces,” he continued. “When future generations ask why America is still free and the heyday of Al Qaeda and their terrorist allies was counted in days rather than in centuries as the extremists themselves predicted, our hometown heroes – soldiers, sailors, airmen, Coast Guardsmen, and Marines – can say, ‘Because of me and people like me who risked all to protect millions who will never know my name.’

“As we sit here right now, we should not lose sight of the fact that America is at risk in a way it has never been before. Our enemy fights for an ideology based on an irrational hatred of who we are. Make no mistake about that no matter what certain elements of the ‘chattering classes’ relentlessly churn out. We did not start this fight, and it will not end until the extremists understand that we as a people will never lose our faith or our courage.

“If they persist, these terrorists and extremists and the nations that provide them sanctuary, they must know they will continue to be tracked down and captured or killed. America’s civilian and military protectors both here at home and overseas have . . . fought this enemy to a standstill and have never for a second wondered why. They know, and they are not afraid. Their struggle is your struggle.

“They hold in disdain those who claim to support them but not the cause that takes their innocence, their limbs, and even their lives.

“As a democracy, ‘We The People’ – and that by definition is every one of us – sent them away from home and hearth to fight our enemies. We are all responsible,” Kelly said.

“If anyone thinks you can somehow thank them for their service and not support the cause for which they fight – America’s survival – then they are lying to themselves and rationalizing away something in their lives. But, more importantly, they are slighting our warriors and mocking their commitment to the nation.

Trump plans to nominate retired Marine General John Kelly to lead the Department of Homeland Security, CBS News reports. pic.twitter.com/F7qNShUXda

“Since this generation’s ‘Day of Infamy’ the American military has handed our ruthless enemy defeat after defeat, but it will go on for years, if not decades, before this curse has been eradicated. We have done this by unceasing pursuit day and night into whatever miserable lair Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and their allies might slither into.”

Kelly is not a partisan. He is a realist.

“We are at war and, like it or not, that is a fact,” he said on that day six years ago.

“It is not Bush’s war, and it is not Obama’s war. It is our war and we can’t run away from it. Even if we wanted to surrender, there is no one to surrender to. Our enemy is savage, offers absolutely no quarter, and has a single focus and that is either kill everyone of us here at home, or enslave us with a sick form of extremism that serves no God or purpose that decent men and women could ever grasp.

Mr. Trump taps General John Kelly as Homeland Security Secretary@Garrett_FoxNews has the latest from the White House transition-tune in NOW! pic.twitter.com/DWKoo1MkyK

“As Americans, we all dream and hope for peace, but we must be realistic and acknowledge that hope is never an option or course of action when the stakes are so high. Others are less realistic or less committed, or are working their own agendas, and look for ways to blame past presidents or in some other way to rationalize a way out of this war.

“The problem is our enemy is not willing to let us go. Regardless of how much we wish this nightmare would go away, our enemy will stay forever on the offensive until he hurts us so badly we surrender, or we kill him first.”

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2016-12-09T05:45:00-05:00http://www.irishcentral.com/business/influencers/the-world-s-viagra-is-made-in-a-small-irish-village-botox-tooThe world’s Viagra is made in a small Irish village (Botox, too!) 2016-12-09T04:44:34-05:00Did you know that the world’s Viagra is made in a small village called Ringaskiddy in County Cork? The Pfizer drug used by many millions of men to combat the effects of impotency is manufactured in the small village that has been nicknamed Viagra Falls. They made 45 tons of the stuff last year—that’s a lot of growth!

In fact, so potent is the effect of the drug on the area it’s thought vapors from the factory have turned the village’s air into something of an aphrodisiac. There's even been a feature film based upon that very premise.

Christine Davies, who works at the local bar, was in no doubt about the factory’s effect on the area, "I'm telling you, it's true! Let's just say a few of my friends have sampled the local men and they say they've never seen the like of it! Talk about staying power! Those fumes have pumped new life into our men, I can tell you. I hear what the wives and girlfriends have to say. They come in here on a Sunday with big smiles on their faces. One told me the other day: 'My old man is so frisky that I'm fair worn out.' And she wasn't complaining, I can tell you."

So perhaps Ringaskiddy could have a future in the honeymoon business too?

One local man, James Hartnett, told reporters that, “a man started work at Pfizer [the Viagra factory] and nine months later his wife gave birth to quadruplets. There’s babies everywhere.”

Another local, Charles Allen mused, “They’re grinding the tablets and the wind is coming from that direction. So there’s bound to be a certain amount in the air all the time.”

Residents have even gone so far as to link the increase in the town’s rabbit population to the arrival of the factory nearly twenty years ago.

But it was a rumor the drug company was keen to scotch, telling the Irish Echo that, “It’s made under the strictest supervision of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the Irish Environmental Protection Agency. There can’t be any kind of emissions.”

Westport has been dubbed the Botox Capital of the world and one local TD (member of Parliament) Michael Ring told the Irish Times, “It is unbelievable when you think of all the film stars and all the pop celebrities who use it, and it comes from a small town in the west of Ireland.”

Irish community support

Nora Higgins (UK)

The Galway woman, who was born in Milltown, emigrated to Britain in 1955. She trained as a nurse in Edinburgh and Glasgow before going to London in 1960 where she married and had three children. She worked for 26 years as secretary in a school for children with severe learning difficulties. She retired at 63 and soon afterwards became a member of the management committee of Southwark Irish Pensioners Project, one of the largest Irish community organizations in south London. The organization provides a drop-in day service and a community outreach Service to hundreds of vulnerable older Irish people.

Mrs Higgins has been a tireless campaigner for older Irish people in Britain and spoke about her experiences as an emigrant in the 1950s in a very moving and memorable intervention at the Global Irish Economic Forum in Dublin in 2013. Earlier this year, the 81-year-old abseiled 100ft down the front of the Golden Jubilee wing at the King’s College Hospital in London to raise funds for its skin cancer unit.

North American Honorees

Brendan Fay (US)

Community activist, theologian, filmmaker and public speaker, Brendan Fay is also co-founder of the LGBT group, Lavender and Green Alliance. He was also a founding member of the Irish AIDS Outreach organization in 1996 which sought to break the silence around AIDS in the Irish community in New York. He has been active on immigration reform, civil marriage, AIDS awareness and human rights. Fay coordinated "Silence to Speech" a documentary series on being Irish and gay in America. He also directed "Taking a Chance on God," a film about gay pioneer priest John McNeill.

Fay has been an activist for LGBT rights and, in particular, Irish LGBT rights in New York for decades. He formed the inclusive St Pat’s For All Parade in 1999 as an alternative to the 5th Avenue Parade. Along with Kathleen Walsh D’Arcy, he worked for many years to secure the right of Irish gay groups to march in the St Patrick’s Day Parade in New York City, a right which was finally won in 2016.

Kathleen Walsh D’Arcy (US)

Co-founder of the LGBT group, Lavender and Green Alliance, Kathleen Walsh D’Arcy is a writer, social worker and community activist. With Fay, she formed the inclusive St Pat’s For All Parade in 1999 as an alternative to the 5th Avenue Parade. Along with Fay, she worked for years to secure the right of Irish gay groups to march in the St. Patrick’s Day Parade in NYC, a right which was finally won in 2016.

The daughter of 1920s emigrants from Offaly and Tipperary, she co-edited two fiction collections by Irish women writers.

Norman P McClelland (US)

The son of Irish emigrants, Norman McClelland is a businessman and philanthropist based in Phoenix, AZ. His Shamrock Foods is one of the largest dairies in the southwest and one of the largest food distribution companies in the US. His philanthropic endeavors include giving 80,000lbs of food each month to a local food bank. He has also helped to create one of the largest urban parks in the world and donated the college of management to Arizona State University. He has also helped to build the Phoenix Irish Centre, Library and Genealogical Centre.

A member of the Global Irish Network, McClelland is proud of his Scots Irish heritage, with roots in Newry, and works hard to support an open and accepting Irish identity, inclusive of all the traditions of the island.

Business and Education

Robert G Kearns (Canada)

A key figure in the Irish community in Toronto, Robert G Kearns has built up a successful insurance business there over the past 35 years. Kearns’s other focus is on creating inspiring spaces in Canada that celebrate and commemorate the Irish presence there. He set up the Ireland Park Foundation, a charitable nonprofit organization, to celebrate the story of the Irish in Canada. He has been instrumental in creating the Ireland Park Famine Memorial along the quayside in Canada’s largest city.

Kearns is now engaged in creating a new memorial in Toronto, Grasset Park, to commemorate Canadian medical staff who died ministering to Irish Famine migrants. He is also a member of the Global Irish Network and has helped a number of Irish firms enter the Canadian market, including providing free office space for one company. He chaired the Ireland Fund of Canada for six years and helped raise funds for integrated education in Ireland.

Science, Technology and Innovation

Garret A FitzGerald (US)

UCD graduate, Prof Garret FitzGerald is a research physician scientist at the University of Pennsylvania. His research has contributed substantially to the prevention and treatment of cardiovascular disease by low-dose aspirin which has benefited millions worldwide. He has also won several major international awards for his work on nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs and is widely published in leading medical journals.

He is closely engaged in facilitating scientific endeavor in Ireland, establishing the successful Centre for Cardiovascular Science at University College Dublin. He was also a founding adviser of Science Foundation Ireland. He has contributed significantly to the training and mentoring of many Irish researchers, several of whom hold senior positions within Irish academia and industry today. Among the more than 100 postdoctoral and doctoral students who have trained in his lab, more than 20 are Irish and remain active in research.

In 2014, Science Foundation Ireland awarded Prof FitzGerald the inaugural SFI St Patrick’s Day Science Medal in recognition of his outstanding contributions to his field of expertise and to his ongoing support of the research community in Ireland.

Sir Terry Wogan (UK)

A Posthumous Award went to Sir Terry Wogan (UK) A favourite of Queen Elizabeth's, Sir Terry Wogan was a much-loved Irish broadcaster whose gentle good humor won him many fans during his career with the BBC. Best known for his breakfast radio show "Wake up to Wogan," before he retired in 2009 he had eight million regular listeners. His television chat show "Wogan" ran from 1982 to 1992. He also provided gently wry commentary for the BBC's broadcast of the Eurovision Song Contest and helped to raise millions of pounds for charity as the face of the BBC telethon "Children In Need." Throughout his career he was a respected and beloved representative of the Irish in Britain. The reaction to his death highlighted the significance of the Limerick man’s contribution to the community, particularly in the 1970s and 1980s.

His rise to the highest ranks of broadcasting in Britain was recognized when he received a knighthood in 2005. He died of cancer in January 2016 aged 77.

Angela Brady (UK)

Architect Angela Brady has built her reputation in Britain over the past 25 years. She graduated from Dublin Institute of Technology’s school of architecture before completing a post-graduate scholarship at Kunstakademiet in Copenhagen. The Dubliner then spent a year in Toronto before moving to London where she set up the award-winning private practice Brady Mallalieu Architects with Robin Mallalieu. Their design studio specializes in contemporary, sustainable architecture.

Brady has been active in the Royal Institute of British Architects and Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland for many years. In 2000 she was a founder of the RIBA Architects for Change group, which campaigns for greater involvement in architecture by women and ethnic minorities. She was president of the RIBA from 2011 to 2013, the first non-British person and the second woman to hold the position.

Gerald Lawless (UAE)

A graduate of Shannon College of Hotel Management, Gerald Lawless joined the Trusthouse Forte hotel chain in the 1970s working with them in Africa, the Middle East, the Caribbean and Britain for 23 years. This included a stint running the Shelbourne in Dublin in the late 1980s. In 1997 he began to work with the Dubai royal family, building their Jumeirah Group into one of the world’s best-known luxury hospitality brands. In his 18 years there, he developed Dubai’s seven-star Burj Al Arab hotel. He spearheaded expansion of the company’s portfolio, which now includes 22 hotels in 10 destinations and more than 100 restaurants from London to Shanghai.

In 2016 he assumed responsibility for strategic tourism and hospitality projects with Dubai Holdings, which is also owned by the royal family.

The Galway man is chairman of the World Travel and Tourism Council, chancellor of the Emirates Academy of Hospitality Management and honorary president of the Jumeirah Group.

Peace, Reconciliation and Development

Martín von Hildebrand Mulcahy (Colombia)

Ethnologist and activist for indigenous and environmental rights, Martín von Hildebrand Mulcahy has played a key role in protecting the Colombian Amazon from illegal resource exploitation, principally mining, and in ensuring that indigenous communities living in these areas can exercise their legal and constitutional rights to manage their territories.

Von Hildebrand was born in the United States of an Irish mother and a German father. He studied in University College Dublin in the 1960s and at the Sorbonne. He has devoted his working life to promoting economic, social and environmental rights in the Colombian Amazon.

In the 1990s, he founded the Colombian NGO, Fundación Gaia Amazonas, which works to empower indigenous communities in the Amazon to exercise their constitutional rights to protect and manage their own territories, to protect the Amazonian ecosystem and support sustainable livelihoods and food security and sovereignty. Von Hildebrand is now working on a project to connect and protect the interdependent ecosystems of the Andes, Amazon and Atlantic coast of South America, spanning a number of countries including Colombia, Brazil and Venezuela.

Sr Mary Dolores Sweeney (Sierra Leone)

For 44 years, Sr Mary Sweeney has worked tirelessly as a member of the Sisters of St Joseph of Cluny, often with limited support, in the extremely challenging environment that is Sierra Leone in West Africa.

The 72-year-old Donegal woman arrived in Sierra Leone in 1972 as a primary school teacher, eventually founding and running St Joseph’s School for the Hearing Impaired, which now supports more than 200 children. Through her efforts at the school in Makeni, she has given education, skills training and life opportunities to vulnerable children in the developing country. She remained in Makeni to keep the school open during the brutal civil war in the 1990s and more recently she has played a significant role in coordinating much-needed support for the Ebola response there.

In recent years Sr Sweeney has widened her ambitions and focused her energies on promoting the development of a curriculum for the training of teachers for special needs education in Sierra Leone.

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2016-12-09T05:42:00-05:00http://www.irishcentral.com/roots/a-hard-christmas-it-was-in-london-in-the-1960s-135401063-237423631A hard Christmas it was in London in the 1960s2016-12-09T07:04:58-05:00
I was wiping the mud from a 20-foot length of half-inch steel reinforcing bar with a wire brush and cursing the frost from the night before, that made it harder. I had, by then, passed the “barra liobar” (frozen fingers) part and the blood was circulating well despite the freezing cold. Steel is about the coldest thing you can handle in freezing weather.

It just didn’t seem like Christmas at all. I received a card from home the day before and Mam said how they were looking forward to Christmas and going to Dingle for the day with Dad. The lads were fine, she said, and they were wondering why I wasn’t coming home and she told them work was tight in England and maybe I wanted to put a bit of money away. Poor Mam, she always thought the better of me.

Today was payday; at least there was something good about it. Tomorrow, Friday, was Christmas Eve, so we had money for a good booze-up if nothing else for the weekend. There were six of us staying in a boarding house in Kentish Town and since we were all from the other side the mood, to say the least, was somber.

There were two from Donegal and they worked in the tunnels and made tons of money. The work was hard but, I’ll tell you, they were harder. There were three of us from West Kerry and we worked straight construction – buildings, shuttering (concrete formwork) and the like. That was hard work, too, but not as tough as the tunnels with the compressed air. The other fellow was from Clare, a more respectable sort of chap and he worked for British Rail as a porter.

I tried the tunnels myself once. I persuaded one of the Donegal fellows to get me a start and to tell the truth it was the money that enticed me outright. But my venture was a disaster. I started and descended into the tunnel and while there the compressed air hit me like a shot after an hour and my ears screamed with pain.

They were worse again when I entered the decompression chamber and I couldn’t wait to get out. I gained a great deal of respect for the Donegal fellows after that. They both wore a medal type apparatus around their necks that gave the address of the decompression chamber of their tunnel.

On Christmas Eve, we worked half a day. The foreman was a sly bastard. He was as Irish as we were, but when the “big knobs” from the Contractor’s office appeared on site he effected such a cockney accent that you’d swear he was born as close to “Petty Coat Lane” as the hawkers plying their trade there on Sunday.

Anyway, we all chipped in and gave him a pound each for Christmas. This gesture did not emanate from generosity but rather preservation. Our erstwhile foreman could be vindictive and on payday, he would come by and ask for a light and you would hand him the box of matches with a pound note tightly squeezed in there and all would be well with the world. Not a bad day’s take as there were twenty in our gang. But the job paid well and no one complained.

When I got to the house on Christmas Eve, I paid the landlady and took a bath and dressed in my Sunday best. I waited for the others and we all sat down to dinner. It had some meat and lashings of mashed potatoes, “Paddy Food” they called it. It didn’t bother us much for we knew we would have steak in a late night café after the pubs closed anyway. The six of us were dressed and ready to go at half six and we headed straight for the “Shakespeare” near the Archway.

After a few pints, there we went to the “Nag’s Head” on Holloway Road. However, we encountered a group from Connemara there and rather than wait for the customary confrontation – for some reason there was animosity between those from the Kerry Gaeltacht area and those from Connemara, which was also a Gaelic speaking area in Galway – we decided to forego it on Christmas Eve. But we assured each another that the matter would be taken care of in the very near future. Just as I was leaving one of the Connemara chaps said, “láithreach a mhac” (soon, my son) and I responded “is fada liom é a mhac” (I can’t wait, my son).

We ended up in the “Sir Walter Scott” in Tollington Park and I barely remember seeing a row of pints lined up on the bar to tide us over the period between “time” called and when we actually had to leave. This period could last an hour depending on the pub governor’s mood.

We ambled, or rather staggered, into the late night café some time after midnight and the waitress gave us a knowing glance and said, “Steak and mash Pat, OK” and we all said “yes." Some of us said it a few times just to make sure we had said it. It was then I thought, Jesus, I never went to Midnight Mass. That bothered me. I had always gone to Midnight Mass, but it was only last year I started drinking and it went completely out of my head.

We had our feed of steak and left and we decided to walk to the “Tube” at Finsbury Park and that would bring us to Kentish Town Station. Somehow, we made it and truthfully I don’t remember a moment on that train.

We arrived home at two and as quietly as possible reached our rooms. One of the Donegal fellows pulled out a bottle of Scotch and passed it around and we just sat on the beds and took turns taking swigs descending deeper and deeper into the realm of the absence of coherence of any sort.

I remember thinking again about missing Midnight Mass and I must have voiced my disgust a number of times to the annoyance of the others and one of them asked me to “shut the hell up." I approached him and hit him right between the eyes and he crumpled to the floor and fell asleep.

The others struggled and lifted me onto the bed and everything just blanked out and I remember awakening on Christmas Day and the fellow I hit was nursing a bruised cheek by the window. I asked him what happened and he said he didn’t know and that he thought he bumped into something in his drunken state. I told him that I thought I hit him and that I was sorry.

He came by my side and sat there and I thought I detected a tear or two in his eyes. He looked at me and said, “You know, this is no friggin’ way to spend a Christmas, is it?” And I said, “You’re right” and I shook his hand for I thought he was a better man than I.

* Originally published December 2014.

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2016-12-09T05:28:00-05:00http://www.irishcentral.com/travel/travel-tips/next-summer-be-part-of-the-grand-hibernian-train-journeyNext summer be part of the Grand Hibernian Train Journey2016-12-09T04:26:36-05:00
Direct Travel Luxe is pleased to offer an amazing opportunity to join us on a very special four-night journey aboard Belmond’s brand new Grand Hibernian, Ireland’s first luxury overnight train. Belmond, the world’s ultimate travel curator and connoisseur of luxury experiences, also operates the celebrated Venice Simplon – Orient – Express and the Royal Scotsman.

The haunting beauty of the pure, unspoiled landscapes and dramatic coastlines, combined with the magic of thousands of years of culture and history, combine to make Ireland an unforgettable destination. Wild and beautiful, Ireland’s energy and romance are intoxicating.

Because Direct Travel Luxe is a member of Belmond’s exclusive “Bellini Club” they have offered us exceptional pricing on the four night July 4-8, 2017 Legends & Loughs journey. Due to our special relationship we are able to sell it at $5575 per person, a savings of over $500 per person. The train carries a maximum of 40 passengers.

Our journey takes you from Dublin to Cork and then on to Killarney, Galway and Westport before returning to Dublin. Activities en route include a behind-the-scenes tour of the Jameson Distillery, kissing the Blarney Stone with private access to the Blarney Castle Gardens, enjoying the spectacular Lakes of Killarney, the breathtaking scenery of Connemara National Park, sporting activities at Ashford Castle, sheepdog trials and traditional Irish music and crafts in Galway.

The Grand Hibernian has been described as a “relaxed country house on wheels.” Inspiration for the interiors of the Grand Hibernian was drawn from Ireland’s unique character and mythology as well as Dublin’s Georgian architecture. The color scheme was influenced by Ireland’s flora and fauna.

Two dining carriages will serve cuisine rivalling the best restaurants in Dublin. Dining aboard the Belmond Grand Hibernian is truly a taste sensation. From wonderful artisan cheeses and superb smoked fish to the freshest seasonal vegetables and Irish whiskies, the onboard menus feature exceptional and authentically Irish fare.

We hope that you are able take advantage of this very special offer. If you have any questions about the train journey, please contact Victoria Boomgarden or Mary Anne Steinmetz at 630-420-3530. For more follow them on Facebook here.

Book by December 31 and you will receive a $100 per person credit at the Grand Hibernian Boutique on board the train.

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2016-12-09T05:26:00-05:00http://www.irishcentral.com/travel/donald-trump-scraps-doonbeg-wall-planDonald Trump scraps Doonbeg wall plan2016-12-09T04:25:44-05:00
Environmentalists in Ireland are rejoicing at the news that President-elect Donald Trump’s operatives at his golf resort in Doonbeg, Co. Clare have scrapped plans to construct a nearly two mile sea wall along the beach to protect his course against erosion. The plan was a controversial one and was met with fierce opposition by some locals because of its size, at nearly 15 feet high, and scope. On Tuesday, Trump Doonbeg officials announced a scaled back plan to protect certain parts of the course that are particularly exposed to the elements on the first, ninth and 18th holes. They are hopeful that the plan will be approved in a matter of months.

Joe Russell, manager of Trump Doonbeg, said he was concerned about the amount of time the original application would have required to proceed.

“Was that acceptable given the threat of the ocean? It wasn’t and what we needed to do was to protect the vital areas of the golf course where we feel any more erosion would cause huge disruption to our business,” he said.

“We need to get something done quickly. I don’t have the time and the ocean keeps coming at me.”

Save the Waves, an environmental group that sponsored a petition that now has more than 100,000 signatures opposed to the original wall, called the development a “good news story.” “This is a defining milestone for the campaign. It demonstrates the power of the international community to protect our coasts. Save the Waves and its Irish partners will continue to monitor the new proposals and remain engaged to guide them towards a responsible solution, but today more than 100,000 people can celebrate the fact that the original ill-conceived sea wall proposal has been scrapped,” spokesperson Nick Mucha said.

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2016-12-09T05:25:00-05:00http://www.irishcentral.com/culture/entertainment/great-irish-christmas-gift-ideas-for-the-ladiesGreat Irish Christmas gift ideas for the ladies2016-12-09T04:24:53-05:00Fancy getting that special lady in your life the perfect gift? Then look no further than the IrishCentral Shop, your one stop shop for gifts for all the women in your life. Of course, you should be showering your loved ones with gifts all year round but there is something that little bit more special about Christmas, so why not liven up your stockings with some of these beauties.

Carraig Donn is one of Ireland’s most well-known and beloved fashion retailers. This soft cozy snood would be a welcome addition to any fashionable ladies closet. It’s lightweight and comfortable making it ideal for wearing even on the windiest of days.

I’m not sure there is a woman in Ireland who doesn’t own at least one pair of ‘house socks’. These warm and comfy socks are a must have to keep your toes from catching a cold. They can also be worn with boots so you can brave the harshest of weather. And don’t worry the bow on the side is just for kicks.

This is a ring where style meets class. The Claddagh Ring is very distinctive to Ireland and represents love, loyalty and friendship. This is a gift to give that special lady in your life any time of year but the backdrop of Christmas is extra special don’t you think?

This set of Irish Coffee glasses is sure to warm the heart of any lucky lady, and belly. Of course you don’t have to actually have an Irish Coffee in these glasses, you could have a Bailey’s Coffee, hot whiskey (Hot Toddy) or even just whiskey neat, the list is endless. Proper surroundings include a roaring open fire, a traditional Irish Aran blanket while bundled up on the sofa and your other half to share the other glass.

A necessity for any sophisticated ladies purse. This compact mirror is inspired by the famous ‘Black goes with everything’ Guinness ad from the 1970’s. This timeless classic is the perfect stocking filler that won’t leave a blemish this Christmas.

Stand out from the crowd in this vibrant red cardigan! Exquisitely crafted in Ireland from soft and warm Merino wool, this cardigan has a gorgeous and unusual drape collar with a one-button fastening detail. Traditional Aran stitches add heft and depth to the luxurious feel. Exquisitely crafted in Ireland by Carraig Donn, the oldest Irish knitwear manufacturer, who know a thing or two about building sweaters to last.

If there is one thing Irish people love it’s their mothers’ cooking. And what do mothers hate? Messy countertops. Well that might be a bit of a stretch but this gift would be a terrific addition to any kitchen. It’s elegant and a perfect gift for all those cooking lovers out there.

Candles have easily become the must have in home décor over the last number of years. This candle holder will allow you to set the perfect ambiance for relaxation throughout the Christmas period because it can get a little bit stressful. The vanilla scent is sure to melt any of those trouble away.

Picture the scene: hot chocolate, roaring fire, Home Alone on the television and snuggled up on the sofa with this Aran blanket over the holidays, you wouldn’t even need anyone else. This blanket is handcrafted from the finest soft Merino wool and is a gift that will last a lifetime.

This cozy, warm polyester fleece from Lansdowne is an Irish spin on a classic! The vibrant green color is beautifully complemented with a fuchsia-pink border along the zipper and embroidered “Ireland.” There’s also a hoodie and pockets for those extra-chilly nights, whether you’re in the US or Ireland. Clean lines and fun accents make this a great throw-over-anything fall and spring jacket.

For more gift ideas you can visit irishcentral.com/shop where you are sure to find something that you'll love.

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2016-12-09T05:24:00-05:00http://www.irishcentral.com/news/politics/irish-diaspora-will-still-have-no-vote-when-st-patrick-s-day-2017-rolls-roundIrish Diaspora will still have no vote when St. Patrick’s Day 2017 rolls round2016-12-09T04:23:51-05:00Sinn Fein Senators continue to fight for the extension of Presidential Voting Rights to the people of the north and the Irish diaspora, despite the Irish government’s announcements last month that there will not be a referendum as previously announced. Last week Sinn Féin Senator Niall Ó Donnghaile addressed the Senate, arguing for a change to voting rights. In a statement he wrote “We sought to enfranchise Irish citizens with the most basic tenet of any democracy, the right to vote. This demand is a long-standing one that comes from our energized global diaspora and the outworking of the Good Friday Agreement almost 20 years ago.”

Currently, unlike 125 other countries, Irish emigrants can only cast a vote for 18 months after they first move abroad. After this they must be physically present in Ireland on election day. For many years groups have been campaigning for these rights to be extended. In 2013 Ireland’s Constitutional Convention recommended that Irish people abroad should have a say in constitutional votes and until just weeks ago it seemed that this motion was supported by the government.

In July 2016 Irish Minister of State for the Diaspora Joe McHugh vowed that a referendum on the issue was planned for early in 2017. This commitment has now been shelved. Speaking in the Dail, Kenny claimed that the necessary changes to the Constitution to extend the vote to Irish citizens overseas could not go to a referendum and then be implemented in time for the next presidential election in 2018.

Last week Senator Ó Donnghaile wrote that while he was encouraged by Fine Gael Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government Simon Coveney’s commitments to the topic during the Senate debate he wrote, “Fine Gael’s amendment to our motion, in practical terms, appears to delay this urgent and much-needed democratic change even further. That is unfortunate, it is regressive and it will not be well received amongst those Irish citizens in the north and the diaspora who continue to be left behind by this government.”

He added that Fianna Fáil must explain why they too changed their direction on the topic and “collaborated with Fine Gael to once again long finger this issue of fundamental rights, equality, entitlement and citizenship.

“It is up to Fianna Fáil, when they travel around the Irish diaspora next St. Patrick’s Day or actually deliver on their long-standing intention to seek election in the North, to tell Irish citizens why they support the continued denial of their rights.”

Last week Mary Lou McDonald, the Sinn Fein deputy leader, accused Fianna Fail and Fine Gael of “walking off the pitch” on the issue.

Fianna Fail Senator Mark Daly told the Irish World, “It is three years or more since the constitutional convention had its meeting and produced its fifth report, yet the government has not moved forward, other than to say there are issues of a technical and legal nature. To put it mildly, in the year of 2016 this is disgraceful.”

He added “The fact it has also not come up with solutions but problems and does not have a real and practical road map is a failure of the government to extend the rights of citizens in terms of the right to vote.”

Here is Senator Niall Ó Donnghaile speech, opening the debate on his Private Member's Motion in the Senate to extend the franchise in Presidential Election all Irish citizens:

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2016-12-09T05:23:00-05:00http://www.irishcentral.com/culture/craic/feel-the-christmas-time-magic-in-dublin-city-center-videoFeel the Christmas time magic in Dublin city center (VIDEO)2016-12-09T04:22:50-05:00
In the lead up to Christmas, it can be difficult to step back from the jam-packed days of last minute gifts and holiday parties and simply enjoy the season as you should. Thankfully, Irish filmmaker Garreth Caulfield has compiled this very special video of some of the best little glimpses of Christmas joy and happiness in Dublin to remind us exactly why we’re going to all this effort: To spend some special time with family and friends at a time of year that can be magical in all its warmth when compared to the cold temperatures that normally greet us outside.

Whether it’s laughing with friends as you stroll to the pub on Christmas Eve, enjoying an Irish coffee in the warmth while surrounded by groups of friends reuniting and family catching up, or simply admiring the Christmas lights, Dublin really is something special throughout December.

As a Christmas present to Dublin, Caulfield and fellow filmmaker Meagan Spellman captured some lovely silent moments among all the hustle and bustle.

“It's sometimes hard to stop and take a few moments out of your busy life to take in the beauty of Dublin at Christmas time,” said Caulfield.

“We found some nuggets of festive allure throughout the city. Take some time to share with friends away for the holidays or just missing home.”

*Originally published in December 2015.

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2016-12-09T05:22:00-05:00http://www.irishcentral.com/opinion/others/christmas-morning-in-ireland-memories-from-decades-gone-byChristmas morning in Ireland: Memories from decades gone by2016-12-09T04:20:33-05:00
Six-o-clock on Christmas morning. Icicles hang from the corrugated roof of the cow-house like pendants of some gigantic necklace, pitchfork handles welded to the concrete wall, trails of vapor rising from the calf-house like steam from New York street vents. The frost clings to our eyebrows, makes spider casts in our hair; the cold dams the flow of blood to the extremities of hands and feet. In a church that my grandfather had helped build we are going to witness the birth of a Christ in the likeness of man.

We troop in single file across a moonscape of frozen eternity. Overhead the Milky Way arcs from northeast to east in a dazzling vista of impossible comprehension. We cling to the mass path along the hedgerows, that same meandering pathway to school and church that generations of feet have trodden bare. When we reach the last stile that leads onto Mount Henry lane we hide the Wellingtons and don the Sunday shoes that my mother has brought in an oilskin message bag.

The whole world is astir. Lights of paraffin lamps splay shafts of light amid groves of pine where the houses stand. There are trap carts on the road and a throwback phaeton to a time when its occupants ruled the world. Lanterns on the trap cars, winking like the outer stars of the Milky Way, bicycle flash lamps casting grotesque shadows on the grass margin of the road.

A sickle moon like a coat hanger dangles a star from the end that faces towards Roche’s Wood. It seems to be sitting on the little tower that houses the church bell, its back to the wind that blows down from Ardagh. It could be the star that travelled east, someone ventures, the same one that guided the Wise Men to the stable. Baltahasar, Melchior, and Caspar, the names drop off like droplets of treacle in the rote memory cell where they have languished. That’s no star, my father says from the head of the troop, that’s the planet Mars.

My father knows the heavens and sometimes as we walk through fields at night, he shares me a little knowledge with me. Long ago, in the depth of winter, a travelling teacher came to the school and conducted a series of night classes. On start-bright nights he would take his students onto the yard and teach them the night sky. Ursus Major, Ursus Minor, Cassiopeia. Saturn rising, Venus declining, the great arc of the Milky Way. And Polaris. Oh yes. Not the brightest star in the heavens but the most important. Once you could find Polaris, due north, you could find any direction. Young fella me lad, I whist this to you. Keep it to yourself, there’s people out there who’d laugh at us both if they knew what we were talking about. So, under your hat, good man yourself.

People standing in little knots, from the wall railings to the front door. Happy Christmas, Happy Christmas, same to you, same to you. For my father handshakes, for my mother hugs and sometimes a kiss on the cheek. I feel I can reach out and touch this aura of goodwill that hovers over our heads and sends out pulses of cheer like a crackling fire. I forget the cold that has stiffened the hair on my eyebrows, excised my fingertips, scraped the flesh from my toes. A younger brother takes me aside and whispers. He has broken the fast, nicked a sweet from his sister’s present. Will he be struck dead if he goes to communion? Chance it; it may be a better prospect than admitting to the disgrace. But I don’t want to die, on Christmas morning of all times, before I have a chance to play with the timber horse and the ball frame and the spinning top.

Home through the rimed fields. The fire has burned down. We huddle like doomed children in a Grimm’s fairy tale. My father and mother dance around the kitchen table, round and round like figures on a music box, he in his Sunday best and the shirt collar with the turned up edges. She in a long black dress and a foxfur draped over her shoulders. Round and round, a glow of warmth returning to their faces. They dance to his makeshift tune, Father Halpin, Father Halpin, Father Halpin’s topcoat, Biddy Murphy, Biddy Murphy, Biddy Murphy’s gold ring. All of a sudden she pulls away. This won’t get the cows milked.

My father never milks cows. It’s beneath his dignity, like holding his arms aloft so that she can wind the hank of wool into a ball. We change the clothes, my mother and I, and go to the cowhouse. I can feel the blast of hot air the moment we enter. This is sometimes my wintering place. I come here when there is no room around the fire or I am in a sulk from being blamed in the wrong. Some night, some night when the hail lashes against the bedroom window, I will slink out here in the dead of darkness and sleep in the empty stall beside the speckled cow. I have an answer ready for those who may mock my resolve. Greater than me have slept in worse places, greatest of all slept in a manger.

A jet of milk hits the inside of the milking pail like a taut wire being pinged. It will go on sounding like that until froth has risen and then the sound will be like a weasel spitting in the hedgerow. I think of a poem my oldest brother’s knows, written by a man called Kavanagh.

My father played the melodeon, my mother milked the cows, and I had a prayer, like a white rose pinned, to the Virgin Mary’s blouse.

---

Tom Nestor is a writer living in County Offaly. For almost forty years he wrote a column in the Limerick Leader - My Life and Times - about the Ireland that he grew up in during the fifties and sixties. It ran from 1964 to 1998. That column became the basis for two works of memoir, published by The Collins Press, titled "The Keeper of Absalom's Island" and "Talking to Kate."

* Originally published in 2015.

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2016-12-09T05:20:00-05:00http://www.irishcentral.com/travel/moving-to-ireland/the-top-5-houses-for-sale-in-ireland-this-year-which-would-you-chooseThe top 5 houses for sale in Ireland this year - which would you choose?2016-12-09T04:15:32-05:00From grand old estates to prime coastal properties in Dublin and Kerry, check out the most expensive homes in Ireland in 2016. Do you have a favorite Irish property? Let us know in the comment section.

Described as one of Dublin’s “finest coastal properties” this 5 bedroom stately home with 1.7 acres of land overlooking Dublin Bay will set you back a mere €6 million ($6.4 million). The house has been on the market since 2015 and its asking price was recently slashed by a €500,000, so perhaps the current owners are open to offers?

This palatial house in one of Dublin’s most sought after areas was the most expensive property sold in Ireland this year, netting the sellers a handy €10.225 million ($11 million). But even though it’s only a short car ride away from Dublin city center, the property stands out because it comes with an acre of land. Something that surely helped make up the mind of bookmaking millionaire and Paddy Power boss, Patrick Kennedy, when he bought it early this year.

Or if you fancy a country estate instead of a suburban mansion, perhaps take a look around this 19th century house, complete with 180 acres of sprawling land, in County Meath. In total 80 of it is made up of parkland and ancient woodland, and the remaining 100 is profitable farmland. Yours for only €3.5 million ($3.74 million). Famous former residents of Bective Demesne include “Father of Polo” John Watson, one of the most famous equestrian sportsmen in Ireland, and the novelist Mary Lavin, who included Bective in her works, most notably her award-winning Tales from Bective Bridge (1942).

This thatch-roofed mansion in one of Ireland’s most famously beautiful towns overlooks the spectacular Kenmare Bay and Caha Mountains. It was built only five years ago by the current owners and as such has all the mod cons that come with a modern house, but still looks like old Irish country house. Valued at €2.75m ($2.94 million), who wouldn’t want their own getaway on the Wild Atlantic Way?

Renville House was sold a few months ago at auction for a cool €3.2 million ($3.42 million). And why wouldn’t it? With 135 scenic acres attached to the 200 year old residence, it provides stunning views across Galway Bay and is a short 10 minute trip away from bustling Galway city center.

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2016-12-08T08:00:00-05:00http://www.irishcentral.com/culture/craic/the-irish-goodbye-how-to-recognize-perform-and-interpret-themWhat you need to know about the Irish Goodbye this Christmas party season2016-12-09T04:15:35-05:00
It's the Christmas party season – egg nog, festive cheer, endless late nights and social obligations. Are you sick of it? Then you need to know about "the Irish goodbye." The origins of the Irish Goodbye, where guests at a public event abruptly leave without saying goodbye, are lost to history, but by now we've become so famous for doing it that our name’s attached. The Irish skip out on public events without announcing it so often that it’s somehow become an identifiable national characteristic. Some cultures think Irish Goodbyes are aggressive in their apparent inconsideration for the host. But Irish people know they are in fact deeply considerate.

There’s a reason for our wordless disappearances. Irish people are famously welcoming. In fact an Irish ritual of welcome is so elaborate and multilayered that it can take an entire afternoon just to make it through the initial greeting protocols.

Have you had your tea? Would you like your tea? Would you like a biscuit with your tea? Would you like milk with it? Almond milk? Do we have almond milk? Sure we can get almond milk. Sit you where you are and I’ll be right back with your almond milk. It’s no trouble. Look-it, would you eat something while you wait? Would you like it heated? Would you have another? You’ll have another. Just have another. You look starved, I’d say you’re starved, are you starved?

It turns out "Father Ted’s" legendary Mrs. Doyle was not a grotesque parody of anxious Irish hospitableness but an expression of it. She was just the first wave of an overwhelming tidal wave of consideration that can break over you in any Irish home.

We can’t help it. It’s hard-wired into us from birth. House-proud Irish people of both sexes know the cardinal rule of Irish life: you will not leave my house with a tale of unmet expectations. There will be tea. There will be dinner. There will be dessert of some kind. And you will like it, so you will.

If you try to rebuff Irish hospitality you are making a fatal social error that will haunt your footsteps for the rest of your days. You can beat, whip or imprison an Irish person, but you cannot refuse their Jacobs Fig Rolls.

I cannot sufficiently express to you what an insult it is to your host to forgo Irish tea ceremonies. Wave your hand in high dismissal and watch what happens to you. It will not, as they say, be pretty.

So Irish Goodbyes are the opposite of Irish welcomes. They are fast, quick and final. One moment you’re there, the next moment you’re in a speeding taxi. Fait accompli.

There are many ways to perform an Irish Goodbye, but they do take practice. If you’re leaving with someone else the first thing to do is meet their gaze then look sharply toward the door. It’s important to do this quickly so as not to arouse suspicion.

Irish people do not understand brevity. They don’t know how to make a long story short, nor do they understand why you would ever attempt to. Knowing this fact you and your partner will start inching toward the door unnoticed. That way you can escape the inevitable interrogation that goes like this ...

Are you leaving us? Ah, you’re leaving us. Would you like a cup of tea? Would you like a biscuit? There are leftovers. I have Tupperware and tinfoil, sure we’ll put it in that. It’s no trouble. And a custard cream. We’ll put it in the bag, sure. No, we’ll put it in your pocket. Say nothing. And take this and this and this and this and this and this and this. And let me hold your coat. Is this your coat? Is this – or this – or this – or this – or this – or this your coat? Look-it, it’s raining. Stay until it stops raining. I am not letting you go and it’s raining.

The Irish ceremony of departure is almost as endless as the arrival, in other words. To escape it by cutting out can cut several hours off your journey home. So you see, Irish Goodbyes aren’t rude at all. They exist to spare you the anguish of separation. They’re actually deeply considerate. They’re also deeply practical. You just have to be Irish to understand how.

* Originally published March 2014.

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2016-05-13T02:00:00-04:00http://www.irishcentral.com/travel/top-ten-apparitions-of-jesus-and-virgin-mary-in-ireland-133868568-237788711The Immaculate Conception - Apparitions of the Virgin Mary in Ireland2016-12-09T04:15:45-05:00
Today marks the Immaculate Conception, December 8, when according to the teaching of the Catholic Church, was the conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the womb of her mother, Saint Anne, free from original sin by virtue of the foreseen merits of her son Jesus Christ. In Ireland until quite recently today was a major feast day and all schools would close. It was also traditionally when people would start their Christmas shopping and towns and cities began to bustle with the feeling of festivities in the air.

Legend has it that a female spectre which haunted the churchyard in Rathkeale, Limerick, was so terrifying that all who looked upon her died soon after. A local man banished the ghost by slicing off her arm with his sword and praying for the rest of the night. In an odd coincidence in 2009, the Limerick Newsire reported that a tree stump in the churchyard contains the image of the Virgin Mary and Child, and that hundreds of visitors had come to the area to pray.

The Independent reports that on September 29, 2009, fourteen people claimed to witness crosses that formed in the sky above the shrine, before the statue became animated and began to weep. The shrine had become a popular site after producing a religious apparition seventy years ago.

Cathy O'Mahony and her mother observed the statue of the Virgin Mary rocking on its heels on July 22 1985. The following night they returned with friends who observed the same event. Since this time, tens of thousands of people have visited the shrine in the hope of seeing something. The Independent reports more recently that O’Mahony stands by her observations, despite others ridiculing her.5. Knock Shrine in Knock, Mayo

Arguably the most famous of Irish apparitions, the Knock Shrine vision occurred on August 21, 1879 at about 8 o'clock. Our Lady, St. Joseph, and St. John the Evangelist appeared in a blaze of Heavenly light at the south gable of Knock Parish Church in Mayo. The site is now a largely visited spot for devout Catholics.

In 1985, four teenage girls reportedly saw a vision of Our Lady and St. Bernadette on a west Sligo road, which had the effect of feeling what they say was like “an electric shock” on their bodies. A shrine has since been built at the Carns Grotto site, and the four women remain steadfast in their belief of what they saw that evening.

In August 1954, Teresa Grimes saw a vision of the Virgin Mary in a nearby bush. In the days following, women in Antrim also reported seeing visions of the Virgin. Crowds flocked to the area for the Immaculate Conception that December.8. Melleray Grotto in Waterford

In 1985, a local teenager, Ursula O’Rourke, said the Blessed Virgin appeared to her and delivered to her several messages. During the following days, several other people saw apparitions at the site and received similar messages as Ursula. 9. Visions of the Virgin Mary in Bessbrook, Armagh

In 1987, teenager Mark Trainor and housewife Beulah Lynch began to have visions of the Virgin Mary at the Lady of Lourdes shrine in Bessbrook, Armagh. Similar to Melleray Grotto, the visions continued during the next several days, and messages were delivered to seers there.10. Eamon de Valera’s vision of Christ

In 2010, a biography of Eamon de Valera reported that the former Irish president had a vision of Christ at Blackrock College in 1928, two years after he founded Fianna Fail.

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2016-12-08T05:22:00-05:00http://www.irishcentral.com/news/irishvoice/hey-mr-trump-illegals-were-flooding-in-in-the-1920s-30s-tooHey Mr Trump Illegals were flooding in in the 1920s & 30s too2016-12-09T04:16:21-05:00
Michael J. Hogan was an Irish American and former congressman for Brooklyn who served in Washington in the 1920s. In 1935, while working a plum gig for the Port of New York, Hogan hatched a $300 scheme with not one, not two but three Italian immigrants. In exchange for the cash, Hogan would provide papers to the immigrants. Hogan, as Tyler Anbinder writes in his excellent and comprehensive new book "City of Dreams: The 400 Year Epic History of New York," “promised to use his connections in Washington to obtain documents indicating that they had entered the United States lawfully.”

Of course, they had not.

Anbinder’s book comes out at a very important moment. One reason often cited for Donald Trump’s victory in the presidential election is anger over immigration in general and illegal immigration specifically. At a rally in Ohio last week, Trump earned roars from the crowd when he brought up illegal immigration.

“We will restore the sovereignty of the United States. We will finally end illegal immigration, have to… We will construct a great wall at the border,” said Trump.

He also targeted immigrants from countries that make it difficult for them to be, what he termed, “safely processed.”

Look, let’s be clear: nobody is in favor of illegal immigration.

But there is an underlying assumption to Trump’s appeal. Many of his supporters – especially Irish Americans and other white ethnic Catholics – like to pretend that in the good old days, grandma and grandpa proceeded through Ellis Island in a calm, orderly fashion and got their papers all nice and legally.

And maybe that is true. Or maybe it just makes them feel better about themselves. Because Anbinder’s book is just the latest proof that for many Americans, grandma and grandpa were undocumented.

“The Department of Labor, under whose aegis immigration fell, estimated that in 1927 there were one million illegal immigrants living in the United States, but the Times put the true figure at two million.”

By one estimate, according to Anbinder, between “100,000 and 300,000 new undocumented aliens were said to be arriving annually.”

Said Harry Hull, the commissioner general of Immigration, “The bootlegging of aliens has grown to be an industry second in importance only to the bootlegging of liquor.”

This is worth noting, first of all, because America, as a nation, did indeed survive this plague of illegal immigrants. Some illegal immigrants even went on to hold jobs and raise children who still walk among us today.

Yes, I know, the numbers of illegal immigrants back then were smaller. But so were the overall population numbers.

And I know, today we have to worry about immigrants pouring over our border. But guess what? We’ve always had to worry about that.

“For anywhere from $25 to $100, aspiring immigrants could find a boatman willing to transport them from Windsor, Ontario, across the Detroit River to Michigan in a skiff,” Anbinder notes.

“Taxi drivers from Montreal all the way to Vancouver also did a thriving business smuggling immigrants across the border. They openly solicited customers at the docks where the immigrants landed. Taxicab drivers in Winnipeg did the same at the city’s main train station.”

Of course there is the supposedly new issue of terrorism and security in our post-9/11 world. Tell that to those who were injured in the explosions which regularly rocked the New York and New Jersey waterfronts which were crawling with German saboteurs, not to mention Irish dock workers sympathetic to German anti-British aims.

The truth is this: Before the harsh 1920s anti-immigrant laws, it was hard to say who exactly was documented or undocumented, simply because the laws were not so clear. But you can bet there were plenty of illegal immigrants.

And yet we survived as a nation. Some people even think we were great back then.

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2016-12-08T00:00:00-05:00http://www.irishcentral.com/roots/history/remembering-james-hoban-the-irishman-who-designed-the-white-houseRemembering James Hoban the Irishman who designed the White House2016-12-09T04:17:23-05:00Today (Dec 8) marks the anniversary of the death of architect James Hoban, the Irishman who won a national competition to be the architect who would design the president's mansion, the White House, in Washington DC. As a boy Hoban trained as a carpenter and wheelwright and from those beginnings gradually acquired the skills that enabled him to win that competition and design one of the most famous buildings in the world. Of course, seeing as the home of the President of the United States home is based on Leinster House, the home of the Irish Parliament in Dublin, it seems obvious that it was an Irishman behind it.

Born in c. 1762, in Callan, County Kilkenny, Hoban was trained in the Neoclassical (Georgian in Britain and Ireland) style and worked in this design tradition throughout his architectural career. He immigrated to the United States just after the Revolutionary War and first settled in Philadelphia.

He moved onwards to South Carolina where he designed the old state capitol building at Columbia.

It was at George Washington’s suggestion that Hoban went to the federal capital in 1792 and submitted a plan for the presidential mansion in Washington DC. Hoban won the national competition and received the commission to build the White House. He was also awarded $500 and a lot in the District of Columbia.

The cornerstone of the famous house was laid in 1793, and work continued until 1801. Hoban also supervised the reconstruction of the building after it was burned by the British, led by Irishmen General Robert Ross, after they captured Washington during the War of 1812.

The design for the White House was generally influenced by Leinster House in Dublin and the main facade by plate 51 in James Gibbs’ Book of Architecture (London, 1728). Leinster House was constructed c. 1750 for the Duke of Leinster. Hoban greatly admired the structure and its designer Richard Cassels.

From 1793 to 1802 Hoban was one of the superintendents in charge of the erection of the Capitol as designed by William Thornton. The Kilkenny man was also responsible for the design of the Grand Hotel (1793–95), the Little Hotel (1795), and his last federal commission, the State and War Offices (1818), all in Washington DC.

Many details of Hoban's life remain a mystery. During his lifetime he was not the legendary figure he has since become. His personal and business papers were mostly lost in a fire in the 1880s and survive only in scattered drawings, legal documents, and newspaper notices.

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2016-12-08T05:21:00-05:00http://www.irishcentral.com/news/community/race-to-save-one-of-ireland-s-last-grass-thatched-cottagesRace to save one of Ireland’s last grass thatched cottages2016-12-08T14:14:21-05:00
A bid to save one of Ireland’s last lived-in thatched cottages has been launched amid fears the building is about to collapse.

Seacoast Cottage in Ballyscullion, County Derry, has been the home Edward Quigley and his sister Eileen for over 70 years, but their stay in the house is becoming increasingly difficult due to a roof collapse two years ago.

The house – estimated to be 300 years old - has never had electricity, running water or central heating and is becoming increasingly difficult to live in.

Despite this, the siblings want to remain in their family home, but repairs are expected to cost almost $100,000.

After failed talks with the government, their nephew, Mark Canning, is hoping the Irish Diaspora may be able to help.

“Edward and Eileen are very worried about the whole thing and I suppose they are embarrassed too about having to look to others for help,” Mark told the Echo.

“The situation we face is repair works to the cottage are going to cost £134,000. This is for emergency works only, fixing the roof which has collapsed into the bedrooms and fixing the roof timbers and back wall which are also in terrible state. Edward is currently sleeping on the damp floor.

“Previously, the government provided ninety percent of the funds towards repair works but now they are only providing up to £50,000.

That means Edward and Eileen need to find £84,000 to fund the rest of the emergency repair works.

It's impossible to borrow this money for thatched cottages because even after spending £134,000 on the cottage it would still only be worth £40,000.”

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2016-12-08T14:53:00-05:00http://www.irishcentral.com/news/patrick-pearse-surrender-letter-withdrawn-from-auction-at-818-000Patrick Pearse surrender letter withdrawn from auction at $818,0002016-12-08T14:09:32-05:00A surrender letter written by Easter Rising leader Patrick Pearse is set to leave Ireland after failing to reach its reserve price at an auction in Dublin on Wednesday evening. The price guide on the letter was set at a minimum of $1.06 million (€1 million) but was withdrawn from auction after three minutes when bidding stopped at $818,000 (€770,000). The letter was estimated to sell for as much as $1.6 million (€1.5 million) but bidding failed to live up the hype around the document and the international attention it received.

Auctioneers at James Adam’s have now confirmed the current unidentified owner has requested they seek an export license so it can leave the country, describing it as “the most significant Irish document to be offered for sale” earlier this week.

The letter, dated April 29, 1916, was written by Pearse just three days before his execution by British forces on May 3 in Kilmainham Jail. It was then handed to Capuchin priest Fr. Columba who delivered it to the rebels still fighting for freedom in the Four Courts. The text called on the Four Courts Irish Volunteers to surrender stating: "In order to prevent further slaughter of the civil population and in the hope of saving the lives of our followers... commandants or officers commanding districts will order their commands to lay down arms".

Two similar letters sent to other garrisons in Dublin in the final days of the Rising are currently owned by Irish state cultural institutions.

“On this occasion, the reserve was not met,” said Stuart Cole, a Director at Adam’s.

“The owner, based overseas, has requested that Adam’s apply for an export license today to formally notify the Government that the document will be leaving Ireland and for the process to be expedited.

“The owner was saddened that the Government refused to bid for the document but now feels relieved of his obligations to keep the document in Ireland.”

Calls were made to the Irish government to purchase the document in the lead up to the auction and several protests were made to its sale both inside and outside the auction room on Wednesday, December 7. The document was offered to the Government to purchase on several occasions in the last few years but they believed the price to be too high.

As the lot was called in the auction, Sinn Féin councilor Mícheál Mac Donncha, made a protest at its sale. Sinn Féin politicians had been among the most vocal in the weeks preceding the sale in stating that it should be purchased by the government.

“This is a disgrace. This is one of the most important documents in Irish history and here we are today in the centenary of the 1916 Rising and it’s on open sale to the highest bidder,” Mac Donncha stated before he was escorted from the auction.

Outside the auction, an estimated 15 people protested accompanied by a small Garda presence.

Responding to criticism about the government’s decision not to purchase the letter earlier this year, Irish Minister for Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, Heather Humphries stated, “The cost mentioned was between €1m and €1.5m so there were other pressures that we felt we had to meet.”

"There were a number of such letters of a similar type. We felt that to spend €1m or €1.5m on one single letter would be rather a lot," she continued, emphasizing that the country’s National Museum already has two other surrender letters written by Pearse and sent to other garrisons in Dublin during the rebellion.

We might honour Pearse better by doing something about homelessness instead of talk about sale of letter. We have spent enough on 1916.

Taoiseach Enda Kenny once again answered the concerns of Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams on Tuesday, confirming that the government had no intention of purchasing the document. Adams previously wrote to Taoiseach Kenny and to Minister Humphries urging them to make the purchase.

“It is a quite frankly bizarre decision, particularly so in the centenary year of the 1916 Rising, for an Irish government to again pass up the opportunity to acquire a document of such historical import and significance,” Adams said.

The letter was last sold to a private collector for a smaller figure of $748,000 (€700,000) in 2005, a purchase also overseen by James Adam’s Auctioneers. The Irish National Library had refused to buy the document privately before this sale when approached with a $53,000 (€50,000) price tag, a small fraction of the figure now placed on the note.

"The most the National Library were prepared to pay was €10,000 [$10,700], so he told us 'if they can't be reasonable' to go ahead and sell it and it achieved €700,000 [$748,000]," said Cole.

If the letter had reached its auction estimate, it would have become the most expensive document to ever be sold at an Irish auction.

Do you think the Irish government should purchase the letter despite the high price tag? Let us know in the comments section, below.

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2016-12-08T14:00:00-05:00http://www.irishcentral.com/culture/entertainment/make-it-an-irish-christmas-a-gift-guide-from-irelandMake it an Irish Christmas – a gift guide from Ireland2016-12-08T04:23:38-05:00
Looking for an Irish gift to give this Christmas? The folks at The Irish Workshop, a new online platform showcasing the work of 100+ talented Irish makers, artists and craftspeople, have put together a Christmas gift guide for some inspiration.

Turf fires

The comforting smell of a real turf fire is magically captured in a scented candle by Belfast’s Bearded Candle Maker. This is a perfect little gift for people living far from the bogs of Ireland so they can recreate the smell of Ireland over the Christmas holidays. Oh and they have a ‘Midnight Mass’ scented candle too.

Myths and legends

Irish textile designer, Dúinn Designs, has paid tribute to Ireland’s rich folklore in their Queen Meabh silk scarf. The design is inspired by the legendary Queen of Connaught who insisted on equality of wealth in her marriage and who started the Cattle Raid of Cooley when she discovered that her husband was one stud bull richer than her! These scarves are also very popular with fans of the Chicago Bulls.

Growing home

The designs of jewelry designer, Tracy Gilbert, are bursting with meaning in the subtlest of ways. Take her ‘Growing Home’ pendant: the design is of a beautiful tree of life, but when you turn the pendant on its side, you’ll see that the crown of the tree transforms into a map of Ireland. Genius and gorgeous! It comes in green (pictured), blue or plain silver. All pieces are hallmarked in the Assay Office in Dublin Castle.

Dublin street scenes and pubs

Chris McMorrow is a self-taught Irish artist whose atmospheric and vibrant paintings have earned him much acclaim. He paints cityscapes, wonderfully capturing the likes of Trinity College Dublin, the bustle of Grafton Street and the GPO. He also has painted 20+ of Dublin’s favorite drinking haunts including Kehoe’s Pub, Temple Bar Pub, and Doheny & Nesbitts Pub. His paintings come framed; a piece of Ireland ready to be hung on walls across the world.

100 years in the making

A new Irish jewelry brand, Terrible Beauty, launched a collection that was based on Ireland’s 1916 Rising including a set of men’s cufflinks that replicate a snippet of the Irish Proclamation. They have 15% off their cufflinks until Dec 10th. Be quick!

Wrap up in style

Áine Knitwear, an award-winning design house based in County Clare, has turned our idea of Irish knitwear – and indeed Aran knitwear - on its head. Their designs are contemporary yet hold onto much of the stitching and techniques of old. This is Irish Knitwear as you’ve never seen. And it’s fabulously warm too!

All these gifts can be purchased tax-free from TheIrishWorkshop.com, and can be shipped worldwide in time for Christmas.

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2016-12-06T05:21:00-05:00http://www.irishcentral.com/travel/norwegian-air-to-offer-ireland-flights-from-new-york-s-stewart-airport-and-rhode-islandNorwegian Air to offer Ireland flights from New York’s Stewart Airport and Rhode Island2016-12-08T04:08:52-05:00Norwegian Air’s Irish subsidiary, which finally won approval to fly transatlantic flights from Ireland last Friday after a two-year battle, announced they will no longer be looking at Boston’s Logan Airport for their new direct service. Citing costs, the airline will instead fly from Cork, Shannon and Dublin to either Portsmouth International Airport in New Hampshire or T.F. Green Airport in Warwick, RI. They have also chosen Stewart International Airport near Newburgh as their New York state base.

The low-cost carrier explained they will be using Boeing 737s for their non-stop flights from Ireland, a single aisle aircraft that carries 150 fewer passengers than the Boeing 787 Dreamliner that they will continue to use on other routes to Logan airport.

“To operate the Boeing 737s … from a primary airport becomes much more expensive with a small aircraft type than a larger aircraft type due to limited passenger numbers,” stated Norwegian spokesman Anders Lindstrom.

“These are the routes that will launch with $69 fares and have average return fares of $300 (to) $350, including taxes. In order to operate such flights profitably, they need to be served by medium-sized/smaller airports within the Greater Boston and NYC areas.”

The decision to award a foreign carrier permit to Norwegian Air International, based in Ireland, came late Friday two years after the airline had made their first license application. The US Department of Transport made a tentative decision last April granting the license, but push-back from American politicians and labor unions caused further delays. Last week, the European Commission officially began arbitration proceedings against the United States, believing the delay in granting the license to be in breach of the Open Skies Agreement, a US-EU treaty that allows EU-registered airlines to fly to the US from anywhere in Europe.

Norwegian Air initially submitted their application hoping to be the first to offer transatlantic flights from Cork Airport, a service they felt was greatly missing, and one that was welcomed by many in Ireland. Thanks to the delays in acquiring their license, Norwegian Air was beaten to the honors by Icelandic low-budget carrier Wow Air, which earlier this month announced flights from Cork to Reykjavik that would allow for further low-cost travel to the US. Norwegian Air will still be the first to offer a direct flight from Cork Airport to America.

The introduction of the airline’s new Cork routes could see has many as ten US and Canadian cities now connected to the Irish airport. As well as the two locations in New York State and New England established by Norwegian Air, Wow Air will serve eight US and Canadian cities from Cork via Reykjavik. These flights are expected to begin in the coming year with service between Cork and the eight North American cities priced at as little as $163.00 (€149.00) one way.

“In terms of Cork, recent polling carried out in Ireland and the Cork area specifically showed huge interest and support for the new routes to Boston and New York, so we are confident the routes will be popular and successful,” said a Norwegian spokesperson.

Norwegian Air International expect to establish their Ireland to New Hampshire/Rhode Island routes by summer 2017 and are expected to run from Cork, Shannon, and Dublin four times weekly. Bookings will be opened early in 2017, according to the airline.

At least 70 staff will be hired for the initial crew at the New England base. The outsourcing of staff to Asia was one of the main concerns of the politicians and unions who protested a foreign carrier permit being awarded to the airline. Norwegian Air has always denied claims it would outsource employees from elsewhere, accusing the unions of scaremongering.

Although travelers from Shannon and Dublin airports can go through US immigration pre clearance, the Irish Times reports that no plans are in place to introduce this at Cork Airport, meaning travelers must undergo immigration and customs clearance at their destination airport in the US.

Would you be happy to travel to a smaller airport to take advantage of transatlantic flights as cheap as these? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section, below.

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2016-12-07T05:21:00-05:00http://www.irishcentral.com/news/no-irish-parades-for-pope-francis-plans-to-visit-mountjoy-prisonNo Irish parades for Pope Francis, plans to visit Mountjoy Prison2016-12-08T04:06:10-05:00
Organizers of Pope Francis' recently-confirmed visit to Ireland have been advised to avoid laying out pompous processions and expensive stately ceremonies – as the modest pontiff would prefer to visit inmates at Dublin's Mountjoy Prison. Pope Francis is due to visit Ireland in August 2018, after an official invitation was extended to him by Taoiseach Enda Kenny in the Vatican just over a week ago.

It will be the first papal reception in Ireland since the high-profile visit of John Paul II, when over a million people attended his Mass in Dublin's Phoenix Park.

But event organizers have been urged to prepare for a much more low-key papal visit, which would be in keeping with the themes of mercy and compassion which have to date defined the 79-year-old Argentinian national's papacy.

Fr. Brendan Hoban, co-founder of the 1,000-strong Association of Catholic Priests [ACP], said "When Pope Francis comes he won't be interested in indulging the personal ambitions of career churchmen or in meeting with the Great and the Good of Church or society. He will prefer to visit Mountjoy Gaol or Our Lady's Hospice in Blackrock and he won't allow the papal cavalcade to rush past the poor of Sean McDermott Street as happened in 1979."

County Mayo-based Fr. Hoban also told of his fears that Pope Francis' visit, which will be just two days long and focused on the World Meeting of Families, might not be enough to breathe much-needed new life into the ailing Catholic Church in Ireland.

He added: "There are many reasons for it: the general collapse of support for institutional religion, the culture wars that ended in bitter defeats in campaigns around contraception, divorce, same-sex marriage and, possibly soon, abortion, the child abuse scandals and the way they were dealt with, and, above all, a refusal or an inability to engage with the modern world.

"After the extraordinary 'success' of the 1979 visit it seemed as if the Catholic Church in Ireland was at the start of a new golden age.

Almost 90 percent of Catholics attended weekly Mass. In a country of three-and-a-quarter million people almost everyone in Ireland turned out to see the pope, with over a million attending the papal Mass in the Phoenix Park. And, as well as a sharp rise in the number of babies being called 'John Paul,' a temporary arrest in the decline in vocations augured well for the future. Catholic Ireland, for a short time, was 'cool.'

"What we didn't contend with, of course, was that we were witnessing not a beginning of something, but an ending."

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2016-12-07T05:23:00-05:00http://www.irishcentral.com/travel/best-of-ireland/the-top-ten-places-to-celebrate-christmas-in-ireland-136154848-237791251Where you should celebrate Christmas in Ireland2016-12-08T04:06:28-05:00
There are few countries that enjoy a cozier, put-your-feet-up Christmas than Ireland. With its family-oriented culture and the legendary friendliness of its people, Ireland for the holidays is one of the most rewarding decisions you could ever make. The Irish love big and boisterous reunions and they love festivities on any scale, but they also love quiet evenings in with a few hand-picked friends in front of a crackling fire.

Visit Ireland in winter to see the soaring landscape celebrated by poets W.B. Yeats, Patrick Kavanagh and Seamus Heaney (you may want to take a volume of each writer’s work along for added atmosphere).

Here are IrishCentral’s top 10 places to celebrate Christmas in Ireland:

1. The Merrion Hotel

With its crackling open fire and rich Georgian drawing rooms, and the deep sofas and flowing champagne to get you in the spirit, the five-star Merrion Hotel is impossibly atmospheric at Christmastime.

Old world civility and elegance meet with WiFi and the 21st century here without missing a beat. The Merrion’s hospitality and superior service make this venue one of the great hotels of the world.

2. Dromoland Castle

First built in the 15th century, Dromoland Castle in its present form was completed in 1835, although the site itself has been associated with Gaelic nobility since the 5th century. It was bitterly fought over when Queen Elizabeth I’s armed forces confiscated it, but since they spent most of her long reign purloining Irish property, this was by no means unusual.

Nowadays the castle is a spectacular five-star hotel on rolling acres that is the ideal place to spend the Christmas holidays. Dromoland is the kind of venue even U.S. presidents marvel at (G.W. Bush was a guest here in 2004).

3. Ballydavid, County Kerry

Ballydavid, County Kerry is a sleepy little Irish village nestling on the very edge of the Atlantic Ocean. But each St. Stephen’s Day (December 26) it comes alive when the Wren Boys come to town in a colorful and very ancient one day celebration in remembrance of an ancient Druid festival.

Wren boys, also called mummers, dress up in masks, straw suits and colorful motley clothing and, accompanied by traditional ceili music bands, take to the street in a blaze of color. They are carrying on a unique and unbroken folk tradition. The Ballydavid Wren is a memorable day of marching, music and dance, featuring an explosion of color and Irish exuberance that’s cheering and irresistible in the midst of winter’s gloom.

4. Leopardstown and Limerick Christmas Racing Festivals

What better way to blow away the winter blahs than with a flutter on the nags. The Christmas festivals at Leopardstown and Limerick are up there among the highlights of the Irish sporting and social calendars.

Anyone who is anyone among the Dublin social cognoscenti goes to Leapordstown on St. Stephen’s Day (Dec 26). Those who spend Christmas west of the Shannon or south of the Silvermine Mountains go to Limerick, as much to shake hands and have a hot port with old friends home for Christmas as to have a bet.

Bundle up and get out to see the majestic Irish landscape in its winter repose. Get away from the high streets and the commercial madness and take time to get acquainted with your own heartbeat. With it being Christmastime most hill walking trips have a festive theme including mulled wine and mince pies to help you on your way.

6. Christmas Pantomime

The pantomime is an distinctly Irish and English comic theater style where a well known fairytale can turn into the most pointed attacks on the government and society figures of the day. Ostensibly for children, these shows come larded with sentimental songs and vicious political satire that will keep adults chuckling too.

In Dublin the Gaiety and the Olympia theaters are the two celebrated venues for this kind of seasonal theatrical fun. If you want to celebrate Christmas the way the Irish themselves do be sure to book your tickets early.

7. Funderland at the RDS

From December 26 Funderland at the RDS is the world’s largest traveling amusements show. Go along and you’ll discover that all Dublin stops by although the place itself never feels too crowded.

Featuring five roller coasters, two giant Ferris wheels, and all manner of thrilling attractions this is an annual hit with kids and all kids at heart.

A visit to this elegant theater may well be the highlight of your Dublin stay this Christmas.

The Abbey Theatre, the first state-subsidized theater, first opened its doors in 1904. The iconic Dublin theater is associated with the writers of the Irish Literary Revival and Irish playwrights and actors of the 20th century such as William Butler Yeats, Lady Gregory, Sean O'Casey and John Millington Synge.

Be sure to pop into the nearby bar The Flowing Tide for a quick restorative drink after the show and you’ll be having a night out like a true Dubliner.

9. An authentic Irish country house

What could be better than Christmas spent in a country house in Ireland? With roaring fires, afternoon teas, hot chocolate and lively guests to meet?

The worldwide recession means that this is the best opportunity you’ll ever have to live your dream and take that winter break you’ve always dreamed of. Start by exploring one of Ireland’s best tourist guides and soon you’ll have your feet up in resplendent surrounds – in a country where a white Christmas is always a distinct possibility.

10. Christchurch Cathedral

Ring in the New Year at Christ Church Cathedral, which has been at the heart of the city of Dublin for almost 1,000 years. The cathedral of Holy Trinity, commonly called Christ Church, was founded by the Vikings, rebuilt by the Anglo-Normans and restored by the Victorians.

Architecturally, it is famed for its Norman crypt (the second largest in Britain or Ireland) and for the arcading of the nave, which is considered to be the finest example of Early English style in the country.

The earliest manuscript dates Christ Church cathedral to its present location around 1030. Dunan, the first bishop of Dublin, and Sitriuc, Norse king of Dublin, founded the original Viking church, which was probably subject to the archbishop of Canterbury. It’s the perfect venue to appreciate the long history of the nation. And afterwards you can sample the finest Fish and Chips you’ll ever taste at the nearby Leo Burdock’s chip shop (a famous Dublin landmark not known to tourists).

* Originally published in 2011.

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2016-12-07T05:15:00-05:00http://www.irishcentral.com/news/irishvoice/irish-american-miracle-man-who-couldn-t-walk-cures-himself-hopefully-othersIrish American miracle man who couldn’t walk cures himself, hopefully others2016-12-08T04:07:16-05:00What to do when you’re paralyzed and facing a lifetime in bed? Start studying for a cure, which is exactly what Frank Reynolds did. Education and determination brought about his personal miracle, and now through his biotechnology company PixarBio, he wants to help others heal the way he did. Debbie McGoldrick talks to the son of Irish immigrants about his remarkable personal story and the life-changing cures he’s creating.

Frank Reynolds’ mother Anne, an immigrant from Kiltimagh, Co. Mayo, had a keen eye for figuring out who was who every Sunday at Mass in the Kingsbridge section of the Bronx back in the sixties and seventies.

“My mother used to say that when you looked around the church you could tell who the carpenters were, who the doctors were, stuff like that,” Reynolds recalled during a recent interview.

“When I looked around the church after being paralyzed I said to myself, ‘I’m the one who is going to cure paralysis.’ Every day for 23 years I’ve said that and I’m proving it.”

That’s no idle boast from the 54-year-old medical inventor, entrepreneur, philanthropist and forever student who holds six master’s degrees from some of the world’s most elite universities, and cites his unending quest for knowledge as the backbone that literally propped him up when his body failed him after a surgical procedure resulted in paralysis in December of 1992.

Reynolds, founder, CEO and driving force at his Massachusetts-based biotechnology firm PixarBio, was told by a number of experts that he wouldn’t be able to walk again, wouldn’t be able to move again. The diagnosis would likely have been on target with any other patient, but there’s nothing average about Frank Reynolds.

“I became my own doctor,” he says, “and I figured out how to get myself walking and moving again. I spent seven years on my back learning and consuming everything I could. And I did it.”

And as long as there’s a breath in his body, Reynolds is determined to keep on inventing and creating and showing the world that the word “no” should never be an obstacle.

Reynolds didn’t begin his life wanting to cure paralysis and disease. His father Frank Senior was also an immigrant, from Cloone, Co. Leitrim, and his parents met in typical Irish style at a New York dance hall back in the fifties. They had four children, and Frank Senior owned bars and real estate in the Bronx and upper Manhattan.

The family traveled back to Ireland often, and young Frank was a champion stepdancer with a specialty in jigs and reels. “I have the fractured feet to prove it,” he laughs. “I enjoyed Irish dancing a lot and won medals at competitions. And then when I was 13 I put all that behind me because I wanted to play football.”

Frank’s brother John has been epileptic all his life and frequently has grand mal seizures. Frank Senior also didn’t escape illness, suffering from Parkinson’s Disease which was diagnosed when he was only 47, rendering him unable to care for himself or recognize his family for many years.

“It was a nightmare, a horrible disease,” Reynolds recalled. “He used to call me Johnny Carson all the time.”

Reynolds was accepted to the University of Miami for nuclear engineering, but declined the offer to remain with his family and run his father’s businesses. He attended Rider University in New Jersey which he commuted to and earned a bachelor of science, and eventually his first master’s in psychology from Chestnut Hill College in Philadelphia. He was working as a psychotherapist and attending St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia on December 14, 1992, the day that upended his life forever.

Reynolds was scheduled for surgery on what he thought was a herniated disc. He woke up paralyzed, his body battling a device that was implanted in his spine – one that was rejected by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) nearly two years earlier. The device had injured or paralyzed some 400 patients before Reynolds and, incredibly, more than 200 after him.

“And then, what was worse, no one was telling me that there was an illegal device,” Reynolds said.

He remembers tuning in to an episode of 20/20 on ABC and a segment by Barbara Walters on spinal surgeries gone wrong. Reynolds soon realized he was watching a show about himself and what he had already endured.

“I called the doctor who was on the report, and I called ABC, and I spoke to the lawyer who was also on the segment. And I signed on with him,” Reynolds recalled.

The litigation, a “nightmare” experience says Reynolds, was eventually successful. The FDA pulled the device off the market in July of 1994. As it turns out, it had been approved for use in the hip, but physicians were also implanting it for spinal procedures. Reynolds contacted the consumer affairs advocate Ralph Nader, and together they worked to ensure that the device was never misused again.

All the while, Reynolds’ mobility was virtually non-existent. Because of the litigation doctors were reluctant to take him on as a patient, he recalls, “so I became my own doctor, lying on my back, in bed in my parents’ house.”

St. Joseph’s University faculty members eventually reached out, wondering why he had dropped his master’s course. He informed them of his changed circumstances and said he wouldn’t be back, but they wouldn’t take no for an answer.

“They said they would do whatever it took to help me graduate,” says Reynolds. “I said that what I needed most was a medical miracle, and they said they had access to medical libraries through library loan programs.”

School and studies had always come relatively easy to Reynolds. He came up with a plan, fully supported by St. Joe’s and Chestnut Hill: acquire as many medical books and journals as possible through their libraries and others, hone in on spinal cord injury research, and study, study, study.

“It’s not like I had anything else to do,” says Reynolds. “I read and absorbed every single thing I could during the seven years I was on my back.”

The movie Lorenzo’s Oil also inspired him. Based on the true story of two parents without any medical background who fought tooth and nail to find a cure for their son’s ALD, Reynolds took heart in the film’s message of sheer grit and determination.

Soon after his botched surgery Reynolds had some movement in his legs. His arms functioned normally. But he could not roll his body or move in his bed. He went home in a brace from his knee to his neck, and the only thing he could consistently do for the seven years he was immobilized was go to the bathroom. Pain was (and still is) a constant.

“I did a lot of research on spinal cord injuries and read that there had never been real advancement, and I couldn’t believe it,” Reynolds said.

“The field only took root after the world wars when soldiers came back and that’s when we started studying it, but nobody had ever made progress. I thought that was crazy.”

Reynolds knew that he could neuro-stimulate his spinal cord through movement, so he used a treadmill and held on with a firm grip, pushing and pushing his body to respond. He made slow but gradual progress, walking a mile a day after six months and five miles per day after a year, but only on a treadmill. Streets and sidewalks, uneven as they are, posed problems that persist to this day, and stairs or an incline were impossible.

But there was no stopping Reynolds. When he wasn’t working his body to the max, he was tending to business.

“I had friends say to me that they were worried about their jobs, that maybe they’d get fired, and I’d keep thinking that they were lucky to have jobs. I didn’t have anything,” Reynolds says.

He set about changing his luck. He finished his second master’s in St. Joseph’s and started a consulting firm, Expand the Knowledge, while attending therapy at McGee Rehabilitation Hospital in Philadelphia. Job hunting wasn’t easy but he landed a position at Xerox thanks to Expand the Knowledge, which he continued to grow with the blessing of his new employer.

Furthering his education was also a top priority during this time. From the years 2000-2006 Reynolds earned an astounding four master’s degrees in various disciplines from Temple University, the University of Pennsylvania, the Wharton School and MIT, where he was a member of the prestigious Sloan Fellows Program. (If that wasn’t enough, Reynolds also earned a 2006 certificate from Harvard Medical School’s MeRIT Program for Managing Clinical Trials.)

His time at MIT came after he left Xerox for Siemens, the vast multi-national engineering company with interests in automation, healthcare and many other technologies. Siemens was hugely bullish on its new recruit, so much so that the company paid for Reynolds to attend MIT.

Reynolds absorbed everything he could at one of the world’s most renowned institutions of higher learning, but not in the way Siemens would have preferred. A meeting with Dr. Robert Langer, a celebrated chemical engineer who runs the largest biomedical engineering lab in the world at MIT and holds hundreds of patents, was yet another transformative experience in the life of Frank Reynolds.

Though Reynolds excelled at Siemens, rising to director of global business development, the opportunity to work with Langer on creating a cure for paralysis was too good to pass up.

“I told him about my cure and he thought it could work,” Reynolds says. “I was so inspired by him. It was such an opportunity. He’s one of the most compassionate, wonderful men I have ever met who always wants to help people and encourage people.” Reynolds founded his first biotechnology and research company, InVivo Therapeutics, in November of 2005. And it was there that he invented what’s known as NeuroScaffold, the first product to show therapeutic effects in humans after a spinal cord injury. It’s awaiting FDA approval, and it’s a product that Reynolds, for obvious reasons, is enormously proud of.

“I invented NeuroScaffold myself and even paid the patent lawyers myself,” Reynolds says. “And it’s working. Seven out of the first eight humans in trial reported functional recovery. It worked 100 percent in monkeys.”

The product is based on early intervention, protecting the traumatized spinal cord immediately after the injury instead of waiting – Reynolds says that in 90 percent of patients, it can take up to 21 days after the trauma for paralysis to fully take root.

“The scarring continues to advance the longer you wait to treat it, and in many patients they scar fully and have no chance of recovery. Now the rest of the world is saying, ‘We’re going to use stem cells on all those people scarred,’ and I’m saying, ‘Why let them scar to begin with? Why don’t we minimize the scar and then add stem cells to what’s left?’”

Reynolds left InVivo Therapeutics in 2013, and though he holds the NeuroScaffold patent InVivo will shepherd it through the FDA approval process which he expects could take four years.

Pain management, not surprisingly, has been a hallmark of Reynolds’ life. He founded his current biotechnology company, PixarBio, in August of 2013 with Langer, who calls Reynolds “the Steve Jobs of life sciences,” hence the Pixar name after the animation studio that Jobs used to run.

PixarBio’s signature product to date, the one that the company believes will transform lives in myriad ways, is NeuroRelease, an injectible pain management drug that is non-addictive and designed to serve as a replacement for morphine and other opiates.

“It’s not just that it’s a morphine replacement and it’s not addictive. NeuroRelease doesn’t affect locomotion either which is so important,” Reynolds says.

According to PixarBio, which employs more than 50 and was named by Boston Business Journal as one of the best places to work in 2016, FDA approval for NeuroRelease will first be for a 14-day post-surgical pain treatment. It is expected in late 2018.

“It’s an injectible and it’s a sprinkle-on,” says Reynolds. “We have a three-day sprinkle for soldiers which the Pentagon asked me to make, and I did. So soldiers in the battlefield won’t have to get an injection of morphine. They can sprinkle the product on.”

Last month, PixarBio’s stock was upgraded to the OTCQX Marketplace which trades several other Big Pharma companies. The company also just completed an offering that totaled $23.4 million which will be used to continue the advances already made with NeuroRelease.

“We’re very, very excited about NeuroRelease, especially given the problems of addiction we have in this country,” says Reynolds.

Resting on his laurels – or resting at all, it seems – is definitely not part of Reynolds’ grand plan. Given his family history, he’s intent on making breakthroughs in epilepsy and Parkinson’s Disease research.

PixarBio is working on developing sustained delivery of the vital brain chemical dopamine over time; a lack of dopamine is one of the main causes of Parkinson’s.

Reynolds is also developing an injectible anti-epileptic drug to treat severe cases of the disease which aims to limit the necessity for resections of the brain – commonly known as lobotomies – particularly in children.

Day to day life for Reynolds presents multiple challenges, especially in cold weather when the stainless steel screws in his back freeze and the sensation can sometimes be unbearable. Soothing the pain with opiates has never, ever been an option for him, he says.

“After my surgery I woke up on morphine and I immediately flashed to my patients as I was a psychotherapist at the time and some were drug addicts. I was on morphine for 10 days and that’s it. I had to get off it,” he recalls.

The old-fashioned way works just fine to salve Reynolds’ ills, he says. “I rarely take pills. I just get creative,” he offers.

Ice can work wonders, and he says heated car seats are his best friends. “I’ve got them in my car. You lay in a heated seat and you get great therapy. Especially in New York, where I can’t walk around at all. I have to be driven everywhere.” Sleep is especially elusive; Reynolds functions on about three hours a night. When he’s standing he’s rarely still. Constant movement helps the joints feel better.

Another remedy that’s proven invaluable to Reynolds is a personal one. It happened in 2010, when he met a woman called Mary Lynch in New York on the night then-Irish President Mary McAleese awarded Reynolds with an Irish Life Science 50 Award.

Mary tells a funny story of meeting her husband-to-be that night, not believing that he was feted by the Irish president. A green flower and Irish passport that he proudly displayed convinced her otherwise. The couple married in August of 2015, and together they raise three children, Margaret, Lauren and Anthony.

In a textbook case of truth being stranger than fiction, Lauren suffered a catastrophic injury on a trampoline on New Year’s Eve 2013 that rendered her quadriplegic. She was visiting her father in Los Angeles, and she was only 12 years old.

Mary says that Frank directed Lauren’s recovery plan, even though the chief of neuro-surgery at the hospital where Lauren was being treated said her chances of regaining mobility were zero.

Frank Reynolds doesn’t know what zero means when it comes to recovery. During 2014 Lauren eventually gained back wrist and ankle movement, and then began to walk again, “though she still can’t open a water bottle,” Reynolds says. Her mother’s gratitude is boundless.

So it goes with the son of Irish immigrants who every day turns tragedy into triumph. And education, he says, remains the key to his success.

“Education has given me credibility, and that’s very important in the field of science,” says Reynolds.

“You know, you have to get educated. I learned most of what I do today in bed without the credentials, but if I didn’t have the credentials I now have they wouldn’t have even let me in the room.

“And today, whatever credentials you get in science, other people will attack them. They’ll say, ‘You have six master’s degrees, but you don’t have a doctorate.’ And I say that today, in order to cure disease, you need multi-disciplines.

“And I always say, innovation never ends no matter what. Sometimes it’s about creating new, and sometimes it’s about using technology to see what’s already there. We’ve got to keep looking at all of it, all of the time.”

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2016-12-07T05:20:00-05:00http://www.irishcentral.com/roots/history/pearl-harbor-irish-hero-remembered-on-the-anniversary-of-the-attackPearl Harbor Irish heroes remembered on the anniversary of the attack2016-12-08T04:07:23-05:00On December 7, 1941 the attack on Pearl Harbor killed 2,403 people and injured more than a thousand others. The attack, a surprise military strike by the Imperial Japanese Navy against the United States, came as a massive shock to the American people and triggered the America's entry into World War II. The United States declared war on Japan on December 8. On this, the 75th anniversary of Pearl Harbor, we remember those lost and the Irish stationed at the Hawaiian naval base that day. In particular, we remember two Irish heroes, John William Finn and Frank Flaherty, who were both awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for their bravery and valor during the attack.

What makes Pearl Harbor so different from other American fields of battle is that, well, for starters it’s not a field.

But it’s not just to do with the fact that the pivotal center of the Japanese attack 75 years ago today was an expanse of water, but also what that water contains.

Water as the covering for a grave lacks that sense of firm finality that earth conveys and this sense is heightened by the fact that the most hallowed of the graves in Pearl Harbor—that of those who died aboard the battleship Arizona—is in shallow water, and that the ship can still be seen in certain conditions.

More than this, the Arizona still leaks oil as this writer witnessed on two visits to Pearl Harbor, one back in the 1990s, the second in 2008. And the leaking continues to this day at a rate of between two and nine quarts per day, depending on conditions.

This, then, is a battle site where the effects of the battle have not subsided with time.

This, too, is also the case of the images and memories from December 7, 1941, that date destined to 'live in infamy.'

Two thousand, four hundred and three Americans died that day. More than a thousand others were wounded. Not a few of the dead were Irish Americans.

Two Irish Americans secured the very opposite of infamy by winning the Congressional Medal of Honor. They were John William Finn, who survived the attack, and Frank C. Flaherty who did not.

Finn, a chief aviation ordnance man stationed at Naval Air Station Kaneohe Bay, earned his medal by manning a machine gun from an exposed position throughout the attack, despite being repeatedly wounded.

Like just about everyone else on Oahu that day, Finn was rousted from the more somnolent duties of a Sunday.

Finn didn’t hesitate.

He ran to a mounted gun and began firing at enemy aircraft. Two hours later he had twenty-one shrapnel wounds and a record of heroic action that would earn him the first Medal of Honor for World War II.

Born in 1909, Finn would live to be a hundred. He died in May 2010.

He was born on July 24, 1909, in Los Angeles. His grandparents on his father’s side were immigrants from Co. Galway, Ireland.

His father supported the family as a shipping clerk in a machinery firm and later as a plumber. Young John left school at age eleven to work. In 1926, at the age of seventeen, Finn enlisted in the Navy. He looked so young that his mother had to accompany him to the recruiting station to verify his age.

Finn’s lack of formal education didn’t hold him back in the Navy and by 1935 he’d risen to the rank of chief petty officer. Six years later, in December 1941, he found himself stationed at Kaneohe Bay, Hawaii, as Navy aviation chief ordnance officer.

The attack on Pearl Harbor and other military facilities on Oahu commenced a few minutes before 8 a.m. and caught American forces completely by surprise.

The Pacific fleet was a sitting duck and the Japanese pilots took full advantage. Those Americans who could, eventually fought back. When John Finn reached his base, it was too late to launch any Navy pilots (their planes were in flames), so he ran to a mounted .50 caliber machine gun and began firing.

His position was completely exposed and soon came under fire. Despite numerous shrapnel wounds, Finn kept up the fight. “I just kept shooting,” he later said in an interview, “because I wasn’t dead.”

Witnesses later claimed that he shot down at least one Japanese plane.

“I’m not sure I shot a plane down, but I can take credit for shooting at every plane I could bear on.”

Two hours later, Finn was receiving medical treatment for his wounds and learning the dreadful details of the attack.

Eighteen ships, including all eight battleships of the Pacific fleet, were sunk or badly damaged. Over 350 aircraft, most while still on the ground, were destroyed.

Nine months later, Finn (now an Ensign) received the Medal of Honor aboard the USS Enterprise from Admiral Chester Nimitz. The official citation bears reading in full:

“For extraordinary heroism distinguished service, and devotion above and beyond the call of duty. During the first attack by Japanese airplanes on the Naval Air Station, Kaneohe Bay, on December 7, 1941, Lt. Finn promptly secured and manned a .50-caliber machinegun mounted on an instruction stand in a completely exposed section of the parking ramp, which was under heavy enemy machine-gun strafing fire. Although painfully wounded many times, he continued to man this gun and to return the enemy’s fire vigorously and with telling effect throughout the enemy strafing and bombing attacks and with complete disregard for his own personal safety. It was only by specific orders that he was persuaded to leave his post to seek medical attention. Following first-aid treatment, although obviously suffering much pain and moving with great difficulty, he returned to the squadron area and actively supervised the rearming of returning planes. His extraordinary heroism and conduct in this action were in keeping with the highest traditions of the U.S. Naval Service.”

Finn remained in the Navy for the duration of the war and stayed on after 1947 in the Navy reserves. He retired in 1956 (at 47 years of age) with the rank of Lieutenant.

He spent the next few decades running a repair shop in San Diego and then a 92-acre ranch 70 miles outside San Diego that he and his wife, Alice, bought in the late 1950s.

Intensely patriotic, and proud of his Irish heritage, he attended World War II memorial services and served for many years as a spokesman for causes such as the campaign to raise funds to secure and preserve the USS Arizona memorial.

While John Finn faced the enemy and survived that day, so long ago and yet so vivid, Frank Flaherty did not live.

And his bravery was not displayed by hands on a machine gun, but rather a flashlight.

There were many acts of extraordinary heroism at Pearl Harbor and they were performed in myriad ways.

Flaherty, who was from Charlotte, MI and an Ensign at the time of the attack, was aboard the USS Oklahoma.

Flaherty’s Medal of Honor reads in part: “For extraordinary devotion to duty and extraordinary courage and complete disregard of his own life….when it was seen the USS Oklahoma was going to capsize and the order was given to abandon ship, Ensign Flaherty remained in the turret, holding a flashlight so the remainder of the turret crew could see to escape, thereby sacrificing his own life.”

Four hundred and twenty-nine men were entombed in the Oklahoma at Pearl Harbor, including Flaherty, after the great ship rolled over.

The ship was raised for salvage in 1943, and the remains inside were eventually interred in mass graves marked "Unknowns" at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu.

In 1943 a destroyer bearing Flaherty’s name was commissioned and it served for the duration of the war.

Flaherty's name is inscribed in the Courts of the Missing at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, and a memorial headstone was placed in Maple Hill Cemetery in his Michigan hometown.

Along with all the other heroes of December 7, 1941, he will be especially remembered this 75th anniversary.

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Originally published in the Irish Echo. You can read more of their stories here.

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2016-12-07T05:22:00-05:00http://www.irishcentral.com/culture/education/learn-irish-while-you-vacation-with-oideas-gael-in-donegalLearn Irish while you vacation with Oideas Gael in Donegal2016-12-08T04:07:40-05:00
The ever-increasing interest in Ireland’s language and culture both nationally and internationally, has made Gleann Cholm Cille, Gleann Fhinne and Tory Island, in Donegal, the holiday destinations of choice for adult Irish language learners and cultural holiday enthusiasts.

Over 2017, the varied courses will attract people from over 30 different countries with participants from several different nationalities attending each week.

Courses are ideally suited to individuals who are out of touch with Irish but are keen to brush up on their conversational Gaeilge. Moreover, the courses are attracting growing numbers of absolute beginners from Ireland and North America.

The end of July summer school flagship programme offers up to eight levels of Irish classes each morning and afternoon workshops in set- dancing, sean-nós dancing, Sean-nós singing, tin whistle, bodhrán, hill walking and simple Irish songs.

Oideas Gael, this year, will present a course on the Language and cultural riches of Tory Island. The course, limited to thirty participants, will offer an opportunity of interacting with the local community and enjoying a unique and memorable Irish welcome.

According to Language Director, Liam Ó Cuinneagáin, the cosmopolitan mix of participants, will this year be given a boost due to Tourism Ireland s promotion of the ‘Wild Atlantic Way’.

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2016-12-07T05:18:00-05:00http://www.irishcentral.com/roots/top-ten-most-annoying-christmas-songs-of-all-time-videos-134877498-237790581The most annoying Christmas songs - Bah humbug!2016-12-08T04:08:02-05:00
With the holiday season in full swing once again, we have taken the time to gather all the Christmas tunes that get too much air time over the festive period. Love them or hate them, there is something here for everyone. Call us a bunch of Scrooges, but these songs have us going ‘Bah, Humbug!’

1. “Simply Having a Wonderful Christmas Time” - Paul McCartney

This song is thought to be unbearable across the board.

2. “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer” - Dr. Elmo

In our research we’ve found that Christmas songs sometimes take on an odd angle, and this one may take the cake. Grandma, dying, on Christmas?!

3. “I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas” - Gayla Peevey

As if the sentiment of this odd song isn’t enough, the vocal tracking of the nasal Gayla Peevey is the star on top of the Christmas tree.

An unsettling paradox of the joy of Christmas set against the horrors of the world. Depressing … thanks, John:

5. “Christmas Shoes” - Newsong

Picking perhaps the most depressing sentiment (a young boy wanting to take care of his dying mother) and pairing it with Christmas results in the most cringe-worthy song we’ve ever heard.

6. “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” - Band Aid

Continuing with the depression streak, we have Band Aid’s original Christmas tune.

Sure, it’s for charity, which we can’t argue with, nor can we argue with a 1984 Bono, but this ‘80s synthesized song imposes too much of a guilt-trip for the holiday season.

7. “I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day” - Wizzard

Christmas is fun and all, but every day?

No, thanks. Plus the costumes these guys are decked out in in the video are just plain creepy.

8. “Mistletoe” - Justin Bieber

Fair enough, it was the Biebs' first foray into Christmas tunes, but any Christmas ditty that employs the term “shawty” is flat out wrong in our book.

9. “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” - Enya

While the sentiment is nice, the repetition is grating. Plus, what is figgy pudding and why would anyone want it brought to them? Here’s Enya’s slower take on the song, which makes it probably even more annoying.

10. “Christmas Time is Here” - A Charlie Brown Christmas

Whether it’s the prepubescent voices squeaking out this song, or the ho-hum interlude typical of Charlie Brown, this song just doesn’t get our spirits high.

* Originally published December 2014.

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2016-12-07T05:19:00-05:00http://www.irishcentral.com/news/shock-over-child-abuse-at-private-south-dublin-schoolShock over child abuse at private south Dublin school2016-12-07T14:09:31-05:00
The garda (police) and state child protection organization Tusla are investigating an alleged sex assault in which a hockey stick was used on a 13-year-old boy in one of Ireland’s most expensive private schools. Eight students have been suspended from €16,000-a-year King’s Hospital school near Palmerstown, Co. Dublin, following the reported dormitory attack on the boy which has stunned all Ireland. The governors of the school met last Saturday to discuss why the assault wasn’t reported to the authorities for four days. The governors said following their meeting they fully support the external investigations which have been launched into the matter.

The Irish Times, which was first to report the assault, said that as many as 15 pupils crowded into a four-bedroom dormitory when the incident took place. A garda investigation is now also trying to establish if any similar incidents had happened at the school in the past. Officers are expected to examine mobile phones belonging to the teenagers in the dormitory. At least four phones are suspected of having recorded the attack.

Senior garda officers investigating the event said that while there would be a full inquiry, they were deeply concerned that the alleged attack wasn’t reported earlier. They feared crucial forensic evidence that might have been available in the immediate aftermath of the crime could have been destroyed.

King’s Hospital is one of Ireland’s oldest Protestant schools, and there are two Church if Ireland bishops on the board of governors.

Taoiseach Enda Kenny said in New York last weekend that he was concerned at allegations of a sexual assault and that the incident was not reported to gardai for four days.

“I’d be very upset if that allegation is true,” he said.

He noted that Ireland has very strong child security systems and children were protected under the Constitution and by Tusla.

Education Minister Richard Bruton said there was no doubt that the alleged incident was disturbing. He said if there was need to review any element of Ireland’s child-care codes they would be reviewed in the light of findings into the King’s Hospital incident.

The Education Minister has described an alleged sexual assault at Kings Hospital school in Dublin as "very disturbing" pic.twitter.com/vGDDEfjs9k

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2016-12-09T00:00:00-05:00http://www.irishcentral.com/news/community/aran-island-dream-home-proceeds-to-go-to-homeless-charityAran Island dream home proceeds to go to homeless charity2016-12-07T04:37:02-05:00
An Irish businessman and host of RTE TV show “Dragons’ Den,” Barry O’Sullivan, is selling a dream home on the Aran Islands and donating the proceeds to two homeless charities - Focus Ireland and COPE Galway. Focus Ireland and COPE Galway, to charities dedicated to aiding the homeless, announced a campaign to allow the wealthy to help with the homelessness crisis. The “Home from Home” campaign encourages people who are in a position to do so, to donate properties or funds to support the provision of homes to the homeless. Every €20,000 each organization receives can be leveraged to purchase or refurbish a home (through borrowing and other government funding schemes). O’Sullivan’s is the first donation to the scheme.

The sale will provide Focus Ireland and COPE Galway with the deposits to purchase at least 15 homes for families who are homeless. The cost-efficient programs in place at both charities mean that every €20,000 each organization receives can be leveraged to purchase and refurbish one home. The balance of the purchase price will come through borrowing and government funding schemes – which are extremely difficult to avail of without the ‘€20,000’ initial leverage.

The result will be that Barry's very generous gift from the proceeds of one house will help to deliver homes for up to 15 families or individuals who are currently homeless. This could be even more depending on the final sale value of Mr. O’Sullivan’s property. The house he is putting up for auction is a stunning 6 bed property which enjoys magnificent views of Kilmurvey beach and the wild Atlantic on Inishmore.

Commenting on the generous act Focus Ireland’s Life President and Founder Sr. Stan said: “I would like to extend our sincere thanks to Barry and his family for this really lovely gift. I thank him not only on behalf of Focus Ireland but on behalf of the families who will have a place to call home because of this great act.”

She added: “It is vital that both Focus Ireland and COPE Galway have programs like “Home from Home” in place that enable donations such as this to be leveraged with other funds to provide much needed housing. Large donors often want to get involved but may be thinking: ‘What can I do to really help?’ Well this is a perfect example of how such a donation will help both our charities to deliver homes for families and their children to escape the trauma of being homeless.”

Meanwhile, CEO of COPE Galway Jacquie Horan says that the numbers of people facing homelessness in Galway is the worst she can remember in her 20 years with COPE Galway – and the biggest challenge now is getting access to housing. So the value of this house in providing a further 15 or more houses for homeless people is amazing. Maybe it might even plant a seed for other such donations.”

It is for this reason that both charities encouraged Barry to go public with his donation. Because of his own high profile associated in the main with Dragons’ Den, it is hoped that this will raise the profile of the property, and encourage others who may be in a similar position to consider doing something similar.

The generous act by the international businessman comes as family homelessness is at record levels with over 1,200 families and 2,400 children facing Christmas in emergency homeless accommodation. Focus Ireland is the lead homeless organization working with families in Dublin, while COPE Galway works with homeless families and individuals in Galway city and county.

The house is going to auction on December 16th with O’Donnellan & Joyce Auctioneers in their Wild Atlantic Way Christmas Property Auction at 2pm in the Harbour Hotel, New Dock Road, Galway. The property is guiding with a minimum value of €300,000 however both charities are hopeful that it will raise even more given the spirit of generosity associated with this gift, coupled with the highest ever levels of need for housing for people experiencing homelessness in Ireland this Christmas.

Barry O’Sullivan has been on the board of management of COPE Galway from 2009 to 2015. He has always been a strong and generous advocate in support of the work of the organization. During this time he also became part of the Dragons’ Den series and used this platform to promote COPE Galway and to support entrepreneurs with a social conscience.

O’Sullivan explained his reasons for selling the house and making his generous offer to help work by the two leading charities. He said: “I know from my work with COPE Galway the terrible trauma families who are homeless go through. I also know charities like Focus Ireland and COPE Galway help many families and individuals to secure a home and escape from being homeless. I am happy to be in a position to sell this house and donate the proceeds to the Home from Home program.”

Barry has spent most of his career in Silicon Valley and is CEO of Altocloud, a tech company with bases in Silicon Valley and Ireland. Focus Ireland is a national organization that believes everybody has a right to a place they can call home. COPE Galway is a local organization whose vision is improved quality of life in a home of your own.

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2016-12-07T05:17:00-05:00http://www.irishcentral.com/roots/history/santa-claus-buried-in-ireland-claim-79753782-237359291Happy St. Nicholas Day! Did you know Santa is buried in Ireland2016-12-07T04:08:54-05:00
Today (Dec 6) marks St. Nicholas Day, a celebration of the heart-of-gold man, who was later known as Santa Claus, who is believed to be buried in Jerpoint Abbey, County Kilkenny.

St. Nicholas, who lived during the 4th century and was Bishop of Lycia in Turkey. He was canonized soon after his death in 346AD and was buried in what is now called Myra, in modern-day Turkey. However, in 1169 his body was moved to Italy and afterwards moved to Ireland by Nicholas de Frainet, a distant relative.

The church of Saint Nicholas was built by his family at Jerpoint and dedicated to the memory of the saint. A slab grave on the ground of this church claims to hold his remains. There is a yearly Mass in relation to the memory of Saint Nicholas, but otherwise the celebration is quite low key.

Historians in Ireland say they have evidence that his remains were brought to Ireland and buried in Jerpoint Abbey by Irish Norman crusaders.

According to local historians and stnicholascenter.org, the church there was "an unusual grave slab with an image of a cleric, thought to be a bishop, and two other heads. The cleric is said to be St. Nicholas and the heads, the two crusaders who, so the story goes, brought Nicholas' remains back to Ireland.

"Though the church dates from 1170, the grave slab appears to be from the 1300s. The tale tells of a band of Irish-Norman knights from Jerpoint, traveling to the Holy Land to take part in the Crusades. On retreat, as they headed home to Ireland, they seized St. Nicholas' remains, bringing them back to Kilkenny, where the bones were buried.

"Evidence lends some possible credence to this tale as the Normans in Kilkenny were keen collectors of religious relics – possibly even more so than the Italians. And it is known that Norman knights from Kilkenny participated in the Holy Land Crusades."

Saint Nicholas was known for his good deeds and generosity, and the Santa Claus legend sprung up around him. He was known for giving anonymous gifts to the poor and to have placed coins in the shoes of people who left them out for him. Saint Nicholas' feast day is now observed on Dec 6 in Western Christian countries and Dec 19 December in Eastern Christian countries.

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2016-12-06T05:25:00-05:00http://www.irishcentral.com/roots/history/mysteries-of-deserted-pre-famine-village-on-achill-island-revealedMysteries of deserted pre-Famine village on Achill Island revealed2016-12-07T04:09:13-05:00Keem Bay on the western-most tip of Achill Island is one of the most remote spots in Ireland. Today, the beautiful valley is largely desolate, the boggy flanks of Croaghaun Mountain slope down to a sheltered white sandy beach. In summer campervans line up along the shorefront and holiday makers brave the cold sea, but during the winter the place is abandoned to sheep, the occasional hiker and the ferocious gales that lash the Atlantic coast. But there is more to the site than meets the eye. If you leave the beach, clamber up the old hairpin bend road, past the early 20th-century coastguard station, you start to notice strange lumps and bumps in the grass. This is the site of a village of over forty houses that stood in the valley c.1838.

This forgotten village and its curious disappearance has been the subject of recent research by the Achill Archaeological Field School, based in Dooagh on Achill Island in County Mayo.

The Achill Field School, Ireland’s oldest, has been involved in research into the history and archaeology of the island since 1991.This research involved extensive survey and excavation of selected sites carried out by staff and students of the Field School, the most notable of which was that of the world-famous Deserted Village at Slievemore. Following on from that, attention turned towards the prehistoirc landscape of Slievemore, and the investigation of several premier Bronze Age sites, one of which produced a decorated pebble, a fine example of early representative art in Ireland.

In 2009, attention turned to the mysterious village in Keem. There is virtually no local memory of the village, but we know that in the decades before the Famine there was a vibrant community of about 40 houses here.

Today it is hard to imagine that such a settlement ever existed. All that remains above ground are some barely discernible grassy banks. The people who lived here left no written trace; their stories are obscured by time. We don’t know their names, what their lives were like, or what happened to them. Archaeology is a way of rescuing their stories, of piecing together their lives from the things they used and left behind.

The team of archaeologists from the AAFS were led to Keem by the trail of historical documents. The Ordnance Survey map, made in 1838, shows the cluster of small buildings that made up the village. The small brown rectangles on the map are scattered haphazardly across an area of about 275yds by 165yds on a shoulder of land beside a small stream.

We know about the village too from accounts left by travel writers who visited Achill with increasing frequency from the 1830s. The island became a tourist magnet after the foundation of the Protestant Achill Mission c.1831 by the Reverend Edward Nangle. These accounts are heavily biased, viewing the local Achill people as primitive and backward, but they provide important clues about the site.

Over three summers our international team of students, including many from North America, painstakingly dug the site layer by layer, revealing the remains of the houses and the everyday belongings of their past inhabitants. As we sifted through soil and made carefully measured drawings a picture of life in pre-Famine Keem began to emerge.

The houses were snug. Much smaller than anything we would call home, with a single room and stout earth and drystone walls over a meter thick. The bigger house was about 23' by 10' and the smaller was just 19' by 8'.

The houses had rounded corners and a single door in the south-west looking to the soft boggy height of Moyteoge Head and the shimmering waters of Clew Bay beyond. There were no chimneys or stone fireplaces, but simple central hearths with the fire sitting directly on the earthen floor. Smoke from the peat fire would have wafted out the door and through the thatched roof of heather or scraws.

The interior of the houses would have been dim, lit by the soft glow of the peat fire and the warm beam of sunlight pouring in from the door. The bigger house had a stone-lined drain running out the door suggesting that cattle were probably kept in the house in winter. This was common practice in the west of Ireland in the 19th century.

The hundreds of pieces of broken pottery we found show that the inhabitants of Keem adorned their homes with fine glazed earthenwares from the English potteries. We found cream colored plates edged with vivid blue and green impressed shell designs, neat milk jugs with brown and black stripes, and bright orange and pink glazed vessels.

These typical early-19th century ceramics are found across the globe from Inuit communities in the far north of the American continent to the homes of planters in the Caribbean. There may have been a dresser or perhaps a wall rack to display these valued ceramics.

Three glass beads were found at the site. These may have been from a broken rosary, small remnants of faith and belief. Lumps of violet amethyst crystal too were round in the houses. These were taken from a nearby quarry and sold to early nineteenth-century tourists by people in the village.

The houses were part of a tight-knit community that farmed the land together, growing potatoes and, perhaps oats, and rearing sturdy black cattle. In an arc surrounding the village the tracks of their fields can be made out on the flanks of the mountains. Long, sinuous lines carved into the boggy ground where the tubers were grown in raised ‘lazy beds.’

The excavations yielded clues to the end of the village. The rubble strewn around the inside of the houses clearly indicate that they were intentionally demolished and their stone carried off. The man credited with these demolitions is well known to students of Irish history. Charles Boycott acquired the lease of Keem in 1855 from Murray McGregor Blacker, a tenant of the Achill Mission. He built a house in the Keem valley overlooking the site of the village.

It would seem however, that the houses were abandoned before Boycott pillaged them for stone. A very poignant account of the village penned in 1852 by Harriet Martineau describes it as “a village of stone cottages, now becoming grass-grown, and silent as the death that laid it waste.” This account suggests that it was the Great Irish Famine of the 1840s that caused the abandonment of the village of Keem.

In 2017 the Achill Field School team will be returning to Keem to investigate another building in the settlement. We hope that the excavation will answer some of the many questions that remain about the site, and help to put the forgotten settlement back on the map.

* Eve Campbell an archaeologist working with the Achill Archaeological Field School, Co. Mayo, Ireland.

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2016-12-06T05:45:00-05:00http://www.irishcentral.com/homepage/despite-trump-irish-win-j-1-visa-extension-for-three-yearsDespite Trump, Irish win J-1 visa extension for three years2016-12-07T04:09:36-05:00An agreement signed yesterday by the Irish government and the US State Department represents a small victory and stop-gap against one of the policy measures proposed by President-elect Donald Trump.

The 12-month Ireland Work and Travel Program, which enables Irish and US citizens between the ages of 18 and 35 who have graduated from second-level or third-level education to work and travel in each other’s respective countries, is safe for three more years.

Ireland’s Ambassador to the US, Anne Anderson, and Evan Ryan, Assistant Secretary of the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, met in Washington to sign a memorandum of understanding between the two countries.

Since it was implemented in 2008, the visa program has been renewed every two years for two years, but yesterday’s agreement marked the first time it has been extended for three years.

This is thought to be in response to a campaign promise that appeared on Donald Trump’s campaign website in 2015 (and since deleted), which stated, "The J-1 visa jobs program for foreign youth will be terminated and replaced with a résumé bank for inner city youth provided to all corporate subscribers to the J-1 visa program."

“Over so many years, the J-1 Programs – including both the summer program and the 12 month program - have made a contribution which is hard to overstate. When our young people spend time in each other’s countries, at a formative period in their lives, the experience stays with them long into the future.

“Time and again, throughout my years here as Ambassador, I have heard from Irish political leaders, and decision-makers in every walk of life, about their J-1 experience in the US and the positive imprint it has left on them. The comments are almost always along the same lines: the experience has challenged them, helped them grow, left them with an enduring sense of warmth about this country. It is not that they will always necessarily agree with every aspect of American policy, but they will have a context in which to make an assessment, and a level of understanding they would not otherwise have.”

Assistant Secretary Ryan also brought up the benefits of the program, namely that “The J-1 Exchange Visitor Program provides opportunities for approximately 300,000 exchange visitors per year to experience the United States, its society and culture, and to engage with Americans in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia.

“Ireland plays a vital part in these exchanges, as one of the top sending countries for all J-1 programs. In 2015, more than 10,000 Irish exchange visitors came to the United States,” said Ryan, counting the students who traveled to the US on summer-long J-1 visas in her total.

Ambassador Anderson also spoke to the J-1 Summer program visa, which allows Irish college students to work in the US for four months at a time, typically during the summer break from school, and which the memorandum of understanding does not pertain to.

For 2016, restrictions for the summer J-1 visa increased, stipulating, for the first time, that applicants must have an employment opportunity lined up before they travel to the US. This brought numbers way down – from 7,000 in 2015 to 4, 200 this year.

Anderson defended the program as an important opportunity for all parties involved. “The J-1 Summer Program for fifty years has been a cherished rite of passage for so many young Irish people, and there can be few better examples of public diplomacy in action. The program attracts some of our best and brightest – before they leave, we remind them that they are ambassadors for Ireland; after they return, we see them develop a dual mandate: as well as being the face of Ireland in America, they help communicate America to Ireland.”

The Irish Ambassador also alluded to the new challenges ahead in a Trump presidency.

“We are on the threshold of a new Administration taking office in the United States, and we can anticipate that there will be a strong focus on immigration issues. As part of that debate, there is likely to be some consideration of exchange program and the role they play. Ireland will of course be making its case on the wider issues of immigration reform, but we will also be happy to share our tremendously positive experience of J-1 program.

“And our central message will be this: these J-1 programs are not just an act of generosity towards young people, although they certainly offer life changing experiences and opportunities. But they are about so much more than that – conferring mutual benefit, projecting soft power, and building enduring relationships.”

Did you or do you know anyone who spent time in the US or Ireland thanks to the J-1 visa? Share your thoughts and experiences in the comment section.

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2016-12-06T05:53:00-05:00http://www.irishcentral.com/culture/entertainment/how-much-did-jackie-know-about-john-f-kennedy-s-affairsHow much did Jackie know about John F. Kennedy’s affairs?2016-12-07T04:09:48-05:00New details on the life of former First Lady Jackie Kennedy reveal she may have known more of her husband's extramarital affairs than had been previously assumed. Throughout their ten-year marriage, and even now decades after his death, rumor is rife regarding Kennedy's mistresses. Fascination with one of America’s most high-profile first couples refuses to abate.

With the release of “Jackie” this December, Natalie Portman’s portrayal of Jackie Kennedy in the weeks immediately after her husband’s assassination, interest around the First Lady and her relationship with her husband has surged as more information is revealed about Kennedy’s complicated marriage.

In a new feature in People Magazine, friends of the Kennedys and those who have written in depth about their lives reveal that Jackie Kennedy may have had an understanding with her husband regarding his affairs and knew of several of the women with whom he had relationships.

“It was a marriage of its time,” a friend told People Magazine.

“At the end of the day, Jack came back to Jackie – and that was it. They loved each other.”

“It was kinetic between them. She wasn’t trying to change him.”

“Jackie Style” author Pamela Keogh claims the example set by Jackie’s father, Wall Street stockbroker John Bouvier, set the tone for what the young woman would expect from her own marriage as a result of his affairs during his marriage to her mother.

“She came from a world where that is what men did, and it was accepted,” Keogh said.

“For these women, if they ever did discuss [their husbands’ infidelities], it was more like, ‘This is what’s going on; let’s go out and get the kids and get on a horse,’” agrees Cornelia Guest, a daughter of one of the First Lady’s close friends.

“They were much more pragmatic about the whole thing.”

“It was all just, you turn the other cheek.”

Jackie Kennedy had, in fact, even spoken to other people about several of her husband’s affairs, claims New York City gossip columnist Liz Smith.

“[Her friends] Truman Capote and Gore Vidal told me she knew all about Judith Exner [an alleged mistress] and everybody else, and that she read [my stories] on Judith with high interest,” Smith said.

Exner, who served as a conduit between JFK and mobster Sam Giancana, claimed she had an abortion after becoming pregnant with the President’s child, revealing details about their alleged affair in her 1977 memoir “My Story.” Kennedy is said to have been unsurprised by what the book revealed.

Jackie Kennedy was also seemingly aware of her husband's alleged affair with White House Staff member Priscilla Wear. According to Kennedy press aide Barbara Gamarekian, Jackie stated, “This is the girl that’s sleeping with my husband” while speaking in French to a Paris-Match reporter.

In keeping with the idea that Jack would always return to Jackie in the end, despite the fact that he is accused of using his special assistant Dave Powers to line up willing women, White House intern Mimi Alford claims he was never “looking for a relationship to replace his marriage.” Alford revealed her 18-month relationship with JFK in her 2012 memoir “Once Upon a Secret: My Affair With John F. Kennedy and Its Aftermath.”

Jill Cowan, a secretary in the White House Press Office, who has also been rumored to have had an affair with JFK, has never commented on her own relationship with him but has spoken of the admiration he held for his wife.

She claimed he was “very proud of the fact Mrs. Kennedy had kept a book of all the place settings and pictures of the flowers, the whole sort of personal touches in the White House.”

Both of the two other high-profile women JFK is alleged to have had affairs with, actress Marilyn Monroe and Mary Pinchot Meyer, the sister-in-law of legendary Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee, died in tragic and unexplained circumstances.

The mental health of Monroe had long been a cause of concern for the President until she mysteriously took an overdose in 1962, aged 36.

Meyer was murdered in Georgetown two years later in a shooting that has not yet been resolved but has fanned the flames of plenty of conspiracy theories.

Earlier this year a handwritten love letter from JFK to Meyer was sold at auction.

“Why don’t you leave suburbia for once – come and see me – either here – or at the Cape next week or in Boston the 19th,” Kennedy wrote in the four-page letter. “I know it is unwise, irrational, and that you may hate it – on the other hand, you may not – and I will love it,” the letter read.

“You say that it is good for me not to get what I want. After all of these years – you should give me a more loving answer than that. Why don’t you just say yes.”

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2016-12-06T05:44:00-05:00http://www.irishcentral.com/roots/history/michael-collins-signs-the-anglo-irish-treaty-the-irish-free-state-is-bornMichael Collins signs the Treaty and his death warrant 95 years ago today 2016-12-06T18:32:21-05:00
The most explosive date in Irish history is December 6, 1921—the date that Michael Collins signed the Anglo-Irish Treaty that created the modern Irish state. It is a date that should be celebrated, but it is a date that to this day hangs heavy over the Republic.

For although it banished the British from 26 counties of Ireland, it is a date that also marked the commencement of internal hostilities among Irish Republicans. The Irish got their nation, but they also got a Civil War—and nearly a century of accusations and recriminations.

This date also marks the end of one-year and 16 days of turmoil. This explosive period began with Bloody Sunday 1920 and ended on December 6. Here is a breakdown of this historic and tumultuous timeline which led to nationhood:

November 21, 1920 – it was on this date, known as “Bloody Sunday,” that Collins’ Squad, his Twelve Apostles, acting on information gathered from the intelligence office at 3 Crow Street, shot 14 British Secret Service agents in their beds. The savagery shocked the British into realizing that there was only one solution in Ireland and that was a negotiated peace.

Christmas 1920 – Eamon de Valera returned to Ireland after 20 months in America. He had three words for Collins and it wasn’t “Nollaig Shona Duit” (Merry Christmas). De Valera knew that because of Bloody Sunday, feelers from Downing Street were forthcoming and he wanted to get back into the game. He also wanted to show that there was more than one “Big Fellow” in Ireland. In the following months he would harass and hinder Collins’ guerrilla warfare, causing a stalemate between the British and Irish to last through the spring.

March-June 1921 – Collateral Damage. While the politicians procrastinated on their way to the conference table, ten young Irishmen were dropped at the end of a rope in Mountjoy Gaol. Today, they are known as “The Forgotten Ten,” but it really should be the “Forgotten Nine.” The first victim, Kevin Barry hanged on November 1, 1920, is legend because of a famous song about him.

The other nine—Thomas Whelan, Patrick Moran, Patrick Doyle, Bernard Ryan, Thomas Bryan, Frank Flood, Thomas Traynor, Patrick Maher and Edmund Foley—were hanged in March, April and June. Some were “guilty” of their crimes, but others were not, as their lawyer, Mike Noyk, knew. This was another case of the British continuing their reign of terror on Ireland. With the truce coming about in July, these nine young men basically died for nothing—except British vindictiveness.

May 25, 1921 – the burning of the Custom House in Dublin. De Valera did not like the filthiness of Collins’ guerrilla warfare. He desired something much more pristine. He told IRA Chief-of-Staff Richard Mulcahy that he wanted “one good battle about once a month with about 500 men on each side.” [Note: de Valera didn’t mention if there would be a referee to make sure the British didn’t send in 501 men.]

After pestering Collins for months, de Valera got his wish when the IRA burnt out the Custom House. It was an utter disaster for the IRA and Collins’ Squad as 100 men of the Dublin Brigades were arrested. The British, mistaking stupidity for audacity and strength, thought it showed the strength of the IRA, and, at the urging of King George V, there was soon a truce.

July 11, 1921 – the Truce takes effect. De Valera went to London with Arthur Griffith, not Michael Collins. He had one-on-one discussions with British Prime Minister David Lloyd George and was told point blank he was not going to get a Republic and that part of Ulster would be partitioned. With heavy negotiations scheduled for the fall, de Valera refused to return to London.

October 11, 1921 – Collins reluctantly traveled to London. In fact, he arrived separately from the rest of the Irish delegation. He stayed in his own townhouse and brought his own staff, including many of his intelligence chiefs: Liam Tobin, Tom Cullen and Ned Broy. Although he trusted Griffith, he was highly suspicious of Erskine Childers, secretary to the delegation, who he thought was either a de Valera spy, or a British spy—if not both.

He was aware that de Valera said, as he sent the plenipotentiaries off to London, “We must have scapegoats.” Collins, ever the realist, stood his ground: “Let them make a scapegoat, or anything they wish of me. We have accepted the situation, as it is, and someone must go.” Tim Pat Coogan, biographer of both Collins and de Valera, believes “It was the worst single decision of de Valera’s life, for himself and for Ireland.”

With Griffith’s health already deteriorating, Collins became the leader of the negotiations, often keeping the rest of the delegation, save Griffith, in the dark. He forged strong relationships with Winston Churchill and Lord Birkenhead, which would bode well when the new Irish Free State came into existence in early 1922.

December 6, 1921 – after weeks of intense negotiations between Collins, Griffith, Lloyd George, Churchill and Birkenhead the Anglo-Irish Treaty was signed at 2:30 a.m. in the morning.

Churchill observed that “Michael Collins rose looking as though he were going to shoot someone, preferably himself. In all my life, I have never seen so much pain and suffering in restraint.”

Lord Birkenhead, after he signed, sighed: “I may have signed my political death-warrant tonight.”

Collins shot back: “I have signed my actual death-warrant.”

He was right, he had less than nine months to live. But before his death he would push the Treaty through the Dáil, get the Irish people to overwhelmingly ratify it in a referendum on June 16, 1922, and begin making inroads against the anti-Treaty forces while leaving hopes of a negotiated settlement possible. But his death would change all that and a brutal civil war ensued which fractured Irish society for the rest of the century.

De Valera After Collins and the Treaty

Within a decade de Valera was back in power and Collins, “the man who won the war”—as Arthur Griffith famously said in the Dáil during the Treaty debate—faded from the national memory. But he did not fade from the memory of Eamon de Valera. Collins' grave in Glasnevin Cemetery in Dublin stood without a marker for 17 years until de Valera granted permission in 1939. There were all kinds of restrictions on the marker, as Coogan points out in his biography of Collins, and the final insult was that at the unveiling of the stone no press or public celebration was allowed—only Collins’ brother Johnny was allowed to attend. It was as if de Valera was still terrified of the Fenian ghost of the dead Michael Collins.

Did de Valera feel guilt for not going to London to do the heavy lifting in 1921? Was he haunted by the memory of the very dead but still very colorful Collins, the flamboyant Dublin Pimpernel?

It’s hard to say. De Valera had little to say about Collins the rest of his life, but about a decade before his death he said this about his erstwhile antagonist: “It is my considered opinion that in the fullness of time history will record the greatness of Michael Collins and it will be recorded at my expense.”

For once, Dev got it right.

* Dermot McEvoy is the author of the "The 13th Apostle: A Novel of a Dublin Family, Michael Collins, and the Irish Uprising" and "Our Lady of Greenwich Village," now available in paperback from Skyhorse Publishing. He may be reached at dermotmcevoy50@gmail.com. Follow him at www.dermotmcevoy.com. Follow The 13th Apostle on Facebook.

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2016-12-06T00:00:00-05:00http://www.irishcentral.com/opinion/others/pogues-fairytale-is-not-a-good-christmas-song-112422499-238060281The Pogues' Fairytale of New York is not a good Christmas song2016-12-07T04:10:10-05:00
As I write this I'm listening to the "Top 100 Christmas songs" countdown. The countdown is only now in the 1990s so there is a long way to go before they get to number one, but I'm sure it will be "Fairytale of New York" by the Pogues and Kirsty MacCool. How can I be so sure that "Fairytale" will be number one? Well, this isn't the first of these polls. In fact, it is one of the annual features of the Christmas season that some media outlet will release a poll of either Irish or British people and invariably "Fairytale" is number one.

I am at a loss to understand how this can be. "Fairytale of New York" is a good song; I like it. However, it is a cynical, hopeless song that seems devoid of anything that makes Christmas special.

Now I know there are some people who don't like Christmas and probably enjoy the gritty "realism" that "Fairytale" evokes. Yet, there is no way that most people feel this way about Christmas otherwise there'd be no way that “It's A Wonderful Life” would regularly feature as the best Christmas movie of all time.

I really don't understand why anyone would want to listen to "Fairytale of New York" at Christmas time. It's so depressing.

I used to think maybe it was a case of people not really listening to the lyrics, as happens (happened) with couples who love The Police's “Every Breath You Take.” I don't think that is the case with "Fairytale," however. It really is inexplicable to me.

Springsteen's "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" is fantastic and just about any Christmas song from Bing Crosby or Frank Sinatra hits the right note at Christmas time.

If it has to have "grim reality," I prefer Band Aid's "Do They Know It's Christmas," which is an upbeat song despite the story behind it. And I really like Garth Brooks' "Belleau Wood," which is an excellent song about the 1914 truce during WWI (although full of historical inaccuracies).

Both "Do They Know It's Christmas" and "Belleau Wood" contain that essential Christmas ingredient - hope. "Fairytale" starts with hope, but then spits it out.

I have to say, however, that my favorite Christmas song is none of those above. It is "Good King Wenceslas," which is the very opposite of “Fairytale.” The story of the man of wealth and power trudging through the snow on a dark, stormy winter's night to bring "flesh," wine and pine logs to a poor man is the essence of what Christmas is about. Hope.

Hope was born 2016 years ago and "Good King Wenceslas" is a great summary of what Christmas should mean to all of us.

* First published in 2010.

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2016-12-06T05:23:00-05:00http://www.irishcentral.com/culture/entertainment/conor-mcgregor-game-of-thrones-appearance-is-likelyConor McGregor “Game of Thrones” appearance is likely 2016-12-06T18:32:37-05:00Conor McGregor is said to be making an appearance in one of the upcoming seasons of "Game of Thrones." The “Notorious” one has reportedly been offered a role to star in the hugely successful series, but no specific details have been given as to what his role will be. McGregor has risen to fame over the past number of years since joining the UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship) back in 2013.

According to various reports, series executives from "GOT" headhunted McGregor specifically for a cameo role. A source told Belfast newspaper Sunday Life, "It's been agreed that McGregor will appear in one of the remaining two seasons of 'Game of Thrones.'

McGregor is easily the UFC’s biggest star at the moment breaking all sorts of records in the process. He was last seen beating Eddie Alvarez at Madison Square Garden to become the first athlete to win multiple UFC belts in two different divisions in the organization's history.

McGregor was also recently granted a boxing license by the State of California, adding fuel to the fire of a rumor that he will fight Floyd Mayweather in a massive boxing showdown. At the moment McGregor will be taking some time off from the fight game to focus on his family, which may give him the time to brush up on his acting skills.

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2016-12-06T05:42:00-05:00http://www.irishcentral.com/news/politics/brexit-black-hole-awaits-northern-ireland-warns-finance-ministerBrexit black hole awaits Northern Ireland, warns finance minister2016-12-06T16:13:12-05:00Northern Ireland Finance Minister Máirtín Ó Muilleoir has told a committee of the Irish Government he believes the country to be "staring into a Brexit black hole." Speaking at an Oireachtas Committee (Irish parliament committee) today, the Sinn Féin Minister stated he could see no opportunities for Northern Ireland following the UK’s decision to leave the EU in the Brexit referendum earlier this year.

"I see no economic opportunity, no cultural opportunity, no opportunities for community uplift and no opportunity for peace-building" Ó Muilleoir told the committee, which has been hearing from witnesses over the last two months on the subject of Brexit and its implications for Ireland.

"I have failed to be persuaded by those who say that we're on the cusp of massive opportunities. To avoid that calamity, it's my job as Finance Minister to put in place the measures that will ensure we don't go over the Brexit cliff, and instead of that, we find a way - most probably under some type of special case or status - where we continue to enjoy the benefits of European membership," he continued.

Despite the Leave campaign winning a UK majority in June’s referendum with 52%, Northern Ireland voted by 56% to remain in the EU, a stance also held by the majority in Scotland, and in England’s capital city London. Legal challenges have since been mounted in Northern Ireland and London regarding their unwillingness to leave the EU, and talk has increased of a second independence referendum in Scotland which would allow them to decide for themselves whether to remain a member of the EU of not if passed.

In October, British Prime Minister Theresa May confirmed that the UK will trigger Article 50 of the EU Lisbon Treaty (the move that will officially begin the divorce with the EU) by the end of March 2017, with plans to complete their departure within two years of that date.

This may be delayed, however, as a result of the case being heard in London. The British government state they do not need parliamentary approval to initiate the formal process of Brexit. The London High Court, however, ruled in favor of Gina Miller, an investment manager and lead claimant in the London case in November meaning parliamentary approval may need to be sought before Brexit can be officially triggered.

There is still much uncertainty over the future of the relationship between governments in Ireland and the UK and in particular the relationship between the Irish government and the Northern Ireland Assembly when Brexit takes place.

Speaking in October, Irish Minister for Foreign Affairs Charlie Flanagan admitted that a hard border between the Republic and Northern Ireland can not be completely ruled out.

Although Minister Flanagan has discussed the border issue with UK politicians and believes that no party wishes to return to the hard border of the past, it is still a possibility.

"That scenario (of a hard border) cannot be ruled out,” he said.

"(However,) I have been speaking to all of my 26 EU colleagues over the past few weeks, and I have impressed on them that we cannot go back to the old days of a heavily fortified border between us because over 30,000 people cross every day."

Although customs checks have not existed along this border since January 1, 1993, security forces often asked travelers for identification because of the violence of the Troubles. British military checkpoints were stationed at main border crossings while other crossings were also made impassable until these controls were removed within the Good Friday Agreement. The last of the controls was removed in 2005.

Ó Muilleoir’s statements in the Oireachtas today about the future of Northern Ireland after their departure from the EU come just weeks after Deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland Martin McGuinness also criticized the British government for their handling of Brexit, referring to them as "A British government that appears totally divided at leadership level and really doesn't know how to process this very difficult situation."

"[the Sinn Fein] position is that we want to remain in Europe. We want a specially-designated position for the North, given that the people of the North voted to see their future in Europe," he continued.

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2016-12-06T14:00:00-05:00http://www.irishcentral.com/opinion/niallodowd/brian-p-burns-considered-front-runner-as-donald-trump-s-ambassador-to-irelandBrian P. Burns considered front runner as Donald Trump’s Ambassador to Ireland2016-12-06T04:15:32-05:00
Brian P. Burns philanthropist, businessman, and close personal friend of President-elect Donald Trump is a front runner to be Ambassador to Ireland. Florida resident Burns, grandson of Irish immigrants, and his wife Eileen were guests of the Trump family over Thanksgiving at Mar a Lago.

He is a member of the Irish America Hall of Fame, which he was inducted into along with Vice President Joe Biden in 2013.

IrishCentral understands, from a close associate, he is actively seeking the job as Ambassador to Ireland. Ironically, his father was a trusted confidante of Joseph P. Kennedy, father of President JFK.

The Burns family and the Trumps have been close for some time. Before the Republican Primary in Florida, in March, Burns, speaking from Mar a Lago, said Trump was going to be successful.

The Palm Beach Daily News quoted him saying “I’m certain that Donald will take Florida easily, and if Marco (Rubio) comes in third he should give it up, but the problem with him is that he’s stubborn. He’s got no business taking on Trump. When he got in that name-calling fight with Trump they should have sent him home to his mother to wash his mouth out with soap.”

Added his wife, Eileen Burns, “I am totally in love with this man. He’s hoping to take Florida and Ohio and then he’s going all the way. He’s taking back this country and there’s going to be big changes in the way things work in Washington.”

The 80-year-old Burns is a nationally regarded Business Executive, Attorney and Philanthropist. He is the chairman of BF Enterprises, Inc, a publicly owned real estate holding and development company.

A Massachusetts native, he is the fifth of seven children born to John J. Burns and his wife, Alice. Burns traces his roots to County Kerry and is a graduate of The College of the Holy Cross. He also graduated from Harvard at the age 23.

He was the leading fundraiser behind the effort to restore the world-famous Marsh’s Library, at St. Patrick’s Close in Dublin, the oldest public library in Ireland. He also founded an American Law Library at University College Cork.

Additionally, Burns has established or donated significantly to many cultural and scholastic institutions. In 1986 he founded The Honorable John J. Burns Library of Rare Books and Special Collections at Boston College in memory of his father, who was a prolific lawyer and Joseph P. Kennedy’s attorney and closest advisor.

Works from his renowned personal collection of Irish art have been exhibited at Dublin’s Hugh Lane Gallery, the Kennedy Center in Washington DC, the Yale Center of British Art in New Haven, Connecticut , and the Phoenix Art Museum in Arizona.

He was a principal benefactor of the first Irish Famine memorial in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which was dedicated in July 1997 by former Irish President Mary Robinson. In 2012 he donated a key Famine-era painting from his collection to Quinnipiac University’s Ireland’s Great Hunger Museum, in Connecticut.

He seems a likely frontrunner for the job given his close personal ties to Trump and his stellar Irish record. However, other contenders may well emerge for what is a plum posting usually announced by St. Patrick’s Day.

Here’s a video of Burn’s induction into the Irish America Hall of Fame in 2013:

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2016-12-05T06:01:00-05:00http://www.irishcentral.com/news/down-man-discovers-a-link-to-his-past-via-hundred-year-old-christmas-letter-136062493-237425071Man recognizes Santa letter writer 100 years ago as his mother2016-12-06T04:16:13-05:00
Just before Christmas in 2011, a County Down man was shocked to find that a letter to Santa written by his mother over 100 years ago had been found in a chimney. Victor Bartlem didn’t realize the significance of the tale at first as his wife read out the details in the Irish Times. The paper reported how Terenure resident, John Byrne, discovered the 1911 letter to Santa from brother and sister A. and H. Howard on a shelf behind a chimney at his home. The letter, slightly scorched after 100 years in a chimney, was written on Christmas Eve by 10-year-old Hannah, known as Annie, and her brother Alfred.

Bangor resident Victor didn’t make the connection with his late mother Annie at first, however, not even when his wife referred to the address of his former family home in Dublin.

It was only when Hannah’s name was mentioned that Victor realized his mother’s role in the fascinating story.

“I simply couldn’t believe it. I never knew about this letter. I never even knew it existed,” Victor told the Irish Times.

“I want a baby doll and a waterproof with a hood and a pair of gloves and a toffee apple and a gold penny and a silver sixpence and a long toffee,” wrote Hannah, born on Christmas Day 1900.

“My mother attended the Zion Church of Ireland school in Rathgar before going on to marry Alfred Bartlem in 1931, with whom she had two sons, Howard and Victor. She and Alfred moved to a house on Lomond Avenue, Fairview, shortly after they married, where she died in 1978,” reported Victor.

He added that his mother had been extremely creative, excelling at various forms of needlework and later at woodwork and was also an expert baker of cakes and other confectionery.

Her niece Iris Murphy, who lives in Dublin, also contacted the paper after she was alerted to her aunt’s story when her daughter in Tasmania read about it on IrishTimes.com.

“My aunt was a very happy-go-lucky person with a great sense of humor,” said Iris.

* Originally published in 2012.

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2016-12-05T05:26:00-05:00http://www.irishcentral.com/opinion/others/remembering-liam-clancy-gone-seven-years-todayRemembering Liam Clancy, the "best ballad singer ever"- Bob Dylan2016-12-07T04:01:34-05:00
When I was growing up in the Irish-heavy north Greenwich Village of the 1960s most of my pals wanted to be Mickey Mantle or Willie Mays. I was different. I wanted to be Liam Clancy.

Why?

Because he was a rebel. And a rogue. He taught me about the audacious Brennan on the Moor and deadly fate of young Roddy McCorley. He sang sad love songs in that beautiful voice that would bring you to tears—then tore into the English with something like “God Bless England” or “Mr. Moses-Ri-Tooral-i-ay.”

I first learned of the pleasures and evils of drink because of “Whiskey, You’re the Devil” and a young girl named “Nancy Whiskey” who’d grab you “by the knees.” And he didn’t let the all-powerful clergy off the hook either, poking gentle, but pointed, fun at the priests and nuns in the audience.

There was another reason he was my hero—I knew Liam always got the girl. And, boy, knowing what I know now, did he ever!

I got to know Liam casually in the 1970s and ‘80s when he drank at the Lion’s Head saloon on Christopher Street in the Village. I would tease him about why he always wore a cap—the worse show business sin, baldness!—and he would go right back at me, commenting about my scrawny red beard.

At the Head, he was a regular and a regular guy and at home he was, because of his albums, part of the family. He was loved and admired on both sides of the Atlantic and as soon as his death was announced on RTE on December 4, 2009 my phone started ringing with calls from cousins and friends in Dublin. His loss was profoundly felt not as a celebrity, but as a friend.

A Superb Performer and Showman

The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem famously burst on the scene with an appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show in January 1961.

“We weren’t that impressed,” wrote Liam in his autobiography. “We were arrogant. Young and arrogant. As they say in Ireland, we didn’t give a tinker’s damn. But we accepted.”

There was a cancellation of one of the acts and the Clancys and Makem filled, getting 15-minutes of uninterrupted publicity. Fifteen minutes and 80-millon viewers later, they were, as Tom Clancy succinctly said, “Fuckin’ famous!” After working at their craft in the back room of the White Horse saloon on Hudson Street in the Village for years, instantly, because of the power of television, they were celebrities.

Greenwich Village contributed a lot to the group. Back then, in the early ‘60s, it was a hotbed of poets and folksingers. Odetta at one joint, Tom Paxton at another, Peter, Paul & Mary around the corner. And a young future Nobel Laureate, Bob Dylan, hobnobbing with them all, especially one Liam Clancy. Liam was Dylan’s hero too.

“People,” the New York Timesquoted Liam in his obituary, “who were trying to escape repressed backgrounds, like mine and Bob Dylan’s, were congregating in Greenwich Village. It was a place you could be yourself, where you could get away from the directives of the people who went before you, people who you loved but who you knew had blinkers on.”

Blinkers off, Clancy, in Dylan’s eyes, attained new artistic heights. “I never heard a singer as good as Liam, ever,” said Dylan. “He was just the best ballad singer I ever heard in my life.”

A Man of His Time Through His Songs

Liam could sing about anything—the sea, apple orchards, traveling people—but he also had a social conscience. He sang poignantly about homelessness in “Streets of London”.

He did not avoid the hot issues of the Northern Ireland Troubles either. In the 1970s when RTE banned the voices of protest in the North—one of the dumbest political decisions ever conceived by the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs, the highly-overrated Conor Cruise O’Brien—Liam did not forget the struggle. It was almost impossible, even in the United States, to get a recording of “The Men Behind the Wire,” but Liam sang it—and was criticized for it—when others would not even touch the incendiary rebel song, the best song to come out of the Troubles.

Liam’s nationalism ran deep. His family owned a pub in Tipperary during the War of Independence and the Black and Tans often paid unwelcomed visits.

He could as easily recite Robert Emmet’s Speech from the Dock as belt out Padraic Pearse’s “Oro Se Do Bheatha” in Irish.

But he was also a showman in the best sense of the word. He could robustly recite the degenerate French poet Charles Baudelaire’s “Get Drunk”, then launch into a rendition of “Ar Fol Lol O,” a song about the innate beauty of mankind.

His signature song, of course, was “The Band Played Waltzing Matilda,” maybe the most beautiful anti-war song ever written. At concerts when he sang this song you could hear a pin drop and when he was finished there was no applause because the audience was stunned. It was not unusual to hear sobbing from man and woman alike.

The Almost Clancys & Makem Sitcom: “Bigger Than the Beatles”

A couple of years ago, I came across one of the great oddities about the Clancys and Makem. There was an old rerun of Danny Thomas’ show Make Room for Daddy from 1963 on TV called “Oh, the Clancys.” They sang “Brennan on the Moor” and “Portláirge.”

I was so surprised by this show I emailed the late Jerry Campbell who was their manager for most of the 1960s. Back in the ’60s Danny Thomas not only had his own show, but with Sheldon Leonard also successfully packaged two other hit sitcoms: Andy Griffith and Dick Van Dyke. Campbell’s response shocked me:

“I had a deal with Danny Thomas & Sheldon Leonard,” Campbell emailed me, “what you saw was basically the ‘pilot.’ It went well and I got a firm offer for CB&TM to star in their own weekly show on NBC, produced by Danny Thomas & Sheldon Leonard & I was to be the associate producer. Lot of money involved. Firm 13 weeks on NBC, plus 13 week options on & on and rerun right going on for years.

“Then the ‘fun’ began!! When the ‘folkies’ found out about it, they hit Liam hard—He was ‘selling out,’ etc. Heavy duty pressure from a number of people. Basically, these people were very jealous that they hadn’t been offered the ‘deal’. They all backed Liam into a corner & I kept explaining to him what was going on, so did the William Morris Agency who represented Thomas & Leonard and so did NBC. Then, a number of people got onto Tommy Makem & he caved in saying he didn’t want to play an Irishman’ on TV. I told him point blank that I would be hard put to seem him playing an Italian on the show. Crazy Shit!! All the ‘Irish’ who got into the ‘discussion’ were basically afraid CB&TM would be very successful and they didn’t want that to happen & CB&TM. I didn’t, couldn’t understand this. When these same people who talked Liam & Tommy out of ‘selling out’ got their own deal with the networks, they jumped right on the ‘bandwagon.’ They turned down the entire deal—left big time $$Millions on the table.

“They did the same thing on a movie deal I had with Peter Bogdanovich for them to star in a Western that he & Larry McMurtry wrote. CB&TM made some big time dumb career decisions, but there was nothing I could do about it. If they had accepted the deals I got for them they would have been bigger then the Beatles.”

“Our Revels Now Are Ended”

One of my proudest possessions is a copy of The Mountain of the Women that Liam sent me. I gave Liam a cameo in my Michael Collins fantasy novel, Terrible Angel, sent him a copy in Ireland, and invited him to my book party at the old Lion’s Head, now the Kettle of Fish. In response, he sent his autobiography to me with this inscription: “For Dermot McEvoy, January 17th, 2003. One good book deserves another. Thanks for thinking of me. I’d love to have been at the launch in the Head/Kettle of Fish. Let’s have a glass there sometime. Give my best to any of the old gang you may come across and—great good luck with the book.—Liam Clancy.”

We never had our glass, but I got to know Liam better, for in the last decade of his life, he published an autobiography, The Mountain of the Women: Memoirs of an Irish Troubadour, which told his story, his struggles, and his many loves and many children.

He went even further in the documentary The Yellow Bittern: The Life and Times of Liam Clancy, which is a brutally honest look at the rise, the tragic fall, and the heroic rise again of Liam Clancy.

He once famously said to Bob Dylan: “No fear, no jealousy, no meanness” which is about the best philosophy a man can have in this tough life. Liam ended every concert with “The Parting Glass.” It’s as if Liam was trying to give his life philosophy—be true to yourself and do no harm to others.

Of all the money that ere I had, I spent it in good company.And of all the harm that ere I’ve done, alas was done to none but me.And all I’ve done for want of wit, to memory now I cannot recall.So fill me to the parting glass. Goodnight and joy be with you all.

Of all the comrades that ere I had, they’re sorry for my going away, And of all the sweethearts that ere I had, they wish me one more day to stay,But since it falls unto my lot that I should rise while you should not, I will gently rise and I’ll softly call, “Goodnight and joy be with you all!”

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2016-12-04T08:00:00-05:00http://www.irishcentral.com/culture/entertainment/what-irish-movies-are-tipped-for-the-oscarsWhat Irish movies are tipped for the Oscars?2016-12-06T04:16:40-05:00Ireland can really hold its own when it comes to making great movies, and the 2017 Oscars are set to be no different. Last year we could make various claims to two of the year’s standout films – "Brooklyn" and "Room" – both flying the flag for our small nation. Then there was the Oscar winner for Best Short Film (Live Action) which went to Irish language short "Stutterer." As the writer, director, and producer Benjamin Cleary took to the stage to accept the statuette he stated, “Every day is a proud day to be Irish, but today even more so… Sláinte!” We’re sure this February’s awards will once again prove to be a very proud day for Irish people.

Although we’re still the far side of Christmas there is some distance to travel before the Oscar rumors start taking over, there is already a lot of talk surrounding several Irish films and Irish actors whose 2016 performances left a mark on the movie-making scene. We take a look at some of the best of the bunch:

Ruth Negga - “Loving”

“Loving” is technically not an Irish film but its leading lady, Irish-Ethiopian actress Ruth Negga, is the talk of the town thanks to her stirring performance. Born in Ethiopia to an Irish mother and an Ethiopian father, Negga moved to Ireland when she was four and was raised in Limerick. She starred alongside Cillian Murphy in “Breakfast on Pluto” and also appeared in the first two seasons of Irish hit series “Love/Hate.”

She has been appearing more on this side of the Atlantic in recent years and is known for parts in “World War Z” in 2013 and “Warcraft: The Beginning” in 2016.

Her starring role in “Loving”, however, has brought her to the attention of the Academy. Her sterling performance as Mildred, who is fighting for her right to marry a white man, has put her in contention for the Oscar. Set in Virginia in 1967, "Loving" tells the story of Mildred and her husband Richard as she faces punishment and imprisonment in order to obtain a legal marriage at a time when interracial marriages were illegal.

“Older Than Ireland”

Having already won the prize for Best Irish Documentary at the Galway Film Fleadh, the heart-warming “Older Than Ireland” will be the only Irish entry among the 145 films considered in the “Best Documentary” category.

This incredibly charming documentary is a great one to watch with an older Irish relative as it takes us back through the past century of Irish life through conversations with 30 Irish centenarians. From the good times to the bad, these Irish people have seen remarkable changes in the country over the past 100 years.

If you’re looking for a great family film for the upcoming holidays this could be the answer for you. Each of the centenarians has a unique take on life and the developments they have witnessed through their lives. “Older Than Ireland” and its incredible characters richly deserve a spot among the nominees.

"The Secret Scripture"

With award-winning director Jim Sheridan at the helm and a whole range of up-and-coming Irish actors joining some of America's stars, this adaptation of Sebastian Barry’s 2008 Man Booker Prize-nominated novel of the same name is yet another emotive piece of cinema greatness from the Irish man. The release date for “The Secret Scripture” has long been projected for 2016, so fingers crossed this makes it into theaters in time for Oscars season.

Set in Roscommon Regional Mental Hospital, the movie features Rooney Mara as the younger version of the now one-hundred-year-old woman, Roseanne McNulty, as she tells the horrific tale of how she ended up in the hospital for over 40 years for falling in love with the wrong person.

Although there are rumors we may not see this film by the end of the year, ruling it out of contention for the 2016 Awards, there are just as many rumors stating that Neeson looks set to receive a nomination for Best Supporting Actor in the upcoming Martin Scorsese film “Silence.” This would be Neeson's first ever Oscar if he was to take home the award in February.

The "Taken" star came extremely close in 1994, when he was nominated for Best Actor for his performance as Oskar Schindler in the award-winning, critically-acclaimed "Schindler's List." Regardless, rumor has it this could be the County Antrim native’s best shot yet at bringing home a golden statue.

Also starring Andrew Garfield, Adam Driver, Tadanobu Asano, and Belfast’s Ciarán Hinds, "Silence" is a historical drama based on the novel of the same name by Shusaku Endo.

Neeson plays mentor Fr. Cristóvão Ferreira in the film, which is based on the violent persecution endured by two Portuguese Jesuit priests in 17th century Japan. Fr Sebastião Rodrigues and Fr. Francisco Garrpe, played by Garfield and Driver, travel to Japan to find their mentor (Neeson) despite the Japanese ban on Christianity and almost all foreign contact.

It was thought the release might be delayed until January so that it would not have to compete with the wave of feel-good films that crop up in the weeks leading up to the holidays.

Another film being mentioned in the Best Documentary category that also has a strong Irish connection is “Gleason,” the story of Irish-American former NFL defensive back for the New Orleans Saints Steve Gleason. He was diagnosed with the neurodegenerative disease, ALS (also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease), at the age of 34 and given a life expectancy of two to five years.

“Gleason,” which has already won several awards at film festivals this year, tells his story, starting with his playing career and his role in helping get the once struggling team back on its feet before being he was dealt the terrifying blow of his diagnosis.

Gleason’s determination to start a family and get his affairs in order make this an uplifting movie, some of which is built around a video journal he and his wife made for their son, who was born in 2011.

Kenneth Lonergan - “Manchester by the Sea”

Half Irish, half Jewish New York native Kenneth Lonergan, who formerly contributed to the screenplay for "Gangs of New York," is the writer and director of “Manchester by the Sea” starring Casey Affleck and Michelle Williams. Williams has also been mentioned for an Oscar nomination, but the film has earned critical acclaim for both its direction and screenplay. The film is seen as a frontrunner for Oscar glory this year.

Lonergan can be seen here talking about his roots in Ireland:

Natalie Portman - “Jackie”

This is a bit of a stretch. Although the big names in this film have no direct links to Ireland, the subject matter certainly does. “Jackie” is, of course, the story of Jackie Kennedy during one of the hardest periods of her life – the weeks of public mourning just after the assassination of her husband, President John F Kennedy. Jackie is contending with the memories of her husband’s assassination, her fight to create a legacy, and the horror of her grief and the social pressure of being such a massive public figure, all of which is beautifully captured by Portman, who is at her best. There is quite a bit of buzz about her being named Best Actress for 2016.

Here’s hoping we’ll see these Irish names on the nominations lists come January 24!

Was there a stand-out Irish film this year we missed out on or any you feel were worthy of an Academy Award in 2016? Let us know if you’ve any suggestions in the comments section, below.

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2016-12-05T05:40:00-05:00http://www.irishcentral.com/culture/craic/9-ways-to-ruin-an-irish-christmas9 ways to ruin an Irish Christmas2016-12-06T04:17:14-05:00There are as many ways to ruin an Irish Christmas as there are Irish people. That's because the only thing you'll ever get two Irish people to agree on is a hearty disagreement. But if you're not a native of Ireland then IrishCentral would like to alert you to at least nine things that could easily put the no in your Noel, the yuck in your Yuletide, the cripes in your Christmas. Beware.

Invite your friends to sing a party piece

This history of Ireland, despite our best efforts, is godawful. So how do you unpack 800 years of brutal colonial exploitation, oppression and murder in a four minute song and not get your listeners dander up?

Perfectly lovely Irish evenings have often run aground after a competently sung "Rising Of The Moon." Be careful who's lonely passion you're igniting. Later on you could find your wife musing sadly about a lost love as the snow falls faintly and faintly falls on the road home.

Buy the Playstation 3 instead of 4

Listen, your dad doesn't know a Playstation from a Space Station. Unfortunately international patriarchy has determined that he's usually the one with the ready cash to purchase it. And if he follows Irish tradition he'll almost certainly have had a few jars before he even reaches the toy shop, raising the likelihood of a fatal error tenfold.

This method of ruining Christmas is utterly fail-safe, in the tradition of It’s The Wrong Train Set, but this is a B-List Barbie, and the classic You Got Me The Little Mermaid When I Wanted Elsa from "Frozen." There’ll be tears on Christmas morning and sulks for days.

Dancing With The Wrong Man Or Woman

Oh, tread carefully. This one unfolds when your older brother brings a nice American wan home from his new life in Miami. She or he is pretty, tanned and smells like fabric softener and bubblegum. You don’t tell anyone, but she or he has completely turned your head and after a Guinness or two your natural caution is diminishing as your ardor swells.

This is a time honored Christmas horror. Whilst you take her or his hand and lead them to the dance floor the entire town will have taken note of your terrible transgression. More to the point, so will your fuming sister or brother. There are a million ways for this to go wrong and only a few where they can go right. It’s too bad that you didn’t meet him or her first, but those are the breaks and you’d be better off rolling with them than being rolled by an angry sibling.

Making The Remark

Seismographs keep track of earthquakes with remarkable sensitivity, but an Irish mammy is an infinitely more sensitive social instrument, recording seismic waves, atmospheric conditions, double-entendres and rude remarks with an unparalleled precision.

Making the remark in an Irish home can lead to spectacular results that are not commensurate with the original offense. In a country where people are literally hardwired to seek consensus, a stinging phrase is an impermissible impertinence.

Comments can range from the deceptively innocent “I see you boiled the Brussels sprouts” to the intentionally wounding, “Is there sherry in this Sherry Trifle?” Pass a remark like that and watch a storm force gale gather around you, deservedly too, I might add.

Watch The Queen's Speech

Each year the Queen of England gives a speech that, thanks to our geographical proximity, is quite easy to pick up in Ireland too. At three in the afternoon some Irish households have left the TV on all day and some have inadvertently watched it, which, if overheard by the neighbors, can have interesting social consequences. This won’t quite ruin Christmas, but it will raise eyebrows.

Give Someone Fruitcake

Nobody likes fruitcake. Nobody.

That’s why there is only one fruitcake in existence and it's gifted and re-gifted to every family in Ireland in a tradition that reaches back to the age of the Firbolgs. Don’t gift fruitcake and if you receive one pass it on the first chance you get. Don’t break the chain.

Auntie Mary’s Home Knit Jumper

Your auntie Mary has cataracts, but she’s devoted to knitting. It’s manual therapy for her anxious hands. Each Christmas she presents you with a special new hand-knit jumper (the Irish word for sweater) that makes you look like you’re auditioning for Dr. Seuss, the musical.

It would, of course, be a terrible thing to avoid wearing this itchy horror to midnight mass where she can proudly claim it’s all her own work before the entire community. Auntie Mary knows Christmas is a time for horrible jumpers and public humiliation and Auntie Mary ruins Christmas.

Unannounced mistletoe

No one likes this embarrassing tradition, no one, especially not the Irish who are notoriously touch averse if they haven’t sent you the unmistakable come hither signal. Irish people live in horror of being grasped by the uninvited and you’ll rarely see the cold shoulder served colder if you try this nonsense on.

Having The Unity Conference

A nation once again? Keep your four green fields to yourself for the week that’s in it between Christmas and New Years. There’s nothing wrong with the political aspiration, but this is a time for deep relaxation and peace.

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2016-12-05T05:38:00-05:00http://www.irishcentral.com/culture/entertainment/batman-s-michael-keaton-became-american-father-to-irish-troubles-kidBatman’s Michael Keaton became American father to Irish Troubles kid2016-12-05T14:03:04-05:00Batman star Michael Keaton became the unlikely adoptive father of a young boy from Northern Ireland during the height of the Troubles, the Daily Mail reports. James Dawson was ten years old when he first spent six weeks of his summer in the American actor’s New York home as part of the charity scheme Project Children. The charity, which first began in 1975, paired host families in the US with children in Northern Ireland, offering them a summer in America safe from the violence of the Troubles. Taking in Dawson during the summer of 1990, Keaton was to welcome the young boy back for a further six consecutive years as a father-son relationship developed between the pair.

Dawson, now aged 36, has recently revealed the extent of time he spent at the former caped crusader’s home, stating that his acting hero introduced him to a touch of Hollywood glamor during his stays there. Referring to him as his “American Dad”, Dawson tells how he was initially supposed to spend just six weeks with Keaton and his ex-wife Caroline McWilliams when the actor was at the height of his Batman fame, but this evolved into a seven-year friendship, during which time he met the likes of Danny DeVito and Courtney Cox, whom Keaton spent some time dating during the ‘90s.

"I was a youngster from a housing estate in west Belfast. Paramilitaries, conflict, and terror were normal. Private planes, luxury mansions, hanging out with Batman and superstars on film sets was not,” said Dawson, who now works as a firefighter controller in Lurgan.

"While the glamor was great, what mattered was that from day one I felt loved.

"Michael referred to himself as my American dad. He was a father figure to me. It is hard to explain how that strength transforms a 10-year-old child. Their kindness and openness stunned me."

During his time with Keaton and his family, Dawson became very close with their son Seán who was seven years old when he first began to visit. The pair remained close and Seán acted as Dawson’s best man when he married. Keaton also attended the wedding.

"He sat quietly at the back of the church, forever the gentleman," Dawson added.

Dawson claims he also remained close with the family during the death of McWilliams in 2010, which he says left him devastated. Keaton, who generally aims to keep his private life under wraps and whose mother is of Irish descent, has kept his work with Project Children quiet. Irish actor Liam Neeson is also a supporter of the charity and narrated the film “How to Defuse A Bomb: The Project Children Story” which premiered in the US in November. The documentary tells the remarkable story of New York policemen and brothers, Patrick and Denis Mulcahy from Co. Cork, and how they paired 23,000 Northern Irish children with 16,000 host families over 40 years. The brothers looked to bring both Protestant and Catholic children out of harm's way for their six-week summer holiday, providing travel and accommodation expenses, and starting out with just six children.

"Everything made more sense; being a Protestant or Catholic became irrelevant," Dawson said of his own time with Project Children.

"It was not just an individual act of kindness. They made me part of their family. I was a kid who felt hanging out with my favorite stars was normal - Danny DeVito, Andy Garcia, Geena Davis. Michael started dating Courteney Cox and I loved spending time with her.

"My life and perspective changed. When I first arrived I'd never once seen a different color or race of people in real life."

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2016-12-05T14:00:00-05:00http://www.irishcentral.com/culture/craic/i-m-dreaming-of-a-st-patrick-s-day-christmas-green-snow-alarms-russian-townI’m dreaming of a St. Patrick’s Day Christmas? Green snow alarms Russian town 2016-12-06T04:17:34-05:00
The residents of one Russian town woke up to the shocking sight of green snow last week. The citizens of Pervouralsk, a city in the industrial Chelyabinsk region of Russia, may have been dreaming of an upcoming white Christmas but were instead greeted on Wednesday morning by what looked like some sort of St Patrick’s Day prank. However, the seemingly incandescent, green-soaked snow across the roadway had nothing to do with the Irish holiday, it was caused by a leak at a nearby chrome plant. Photos of the bright green slush appeared on several social media sites.

Russian Chrome Chemicals 1915 company representative Vladislav Oreshkin said the incident was caused by an “old slurry tank built in 1960 with violations of health and safety rules.”

Oreshkin said, “The accident today happened on a pipe between a pump and a cleaning station. Some of the water pumped from under the ground went on the surface.”

“In Soviet times, some of the chromium-containing water stayed underground and went straight into Chusovaya River. Ten years ago, we launched a system of drainage wells that capture contaminated water and neutralize it. One of the wells got clogged and part of the water went on the surface,” he said.

Officials assured residents of the town, which is located on the Chusovaya River in the Ural Mountains, not to worry as the leak would not cause any danger to their health.

“The situation is under control. Our team was at the site 15 minutes after the accident. We are planning to finish the clean up within one day,” Oreshkin told The Siberian Times.

People living in Pervouralsk have described “colorful” rain and snow in the past. Complaints of “throat aches” have also been believed to be somehow connected to the plant.

Acquired by the MidUral Group, the Russian Chrome Chemicals 1915 company, which “specializes in production of chrome-containing industrial materials and reagents,” has participated in an environmental protection program since 2011.

The company claims that it has taken measures to drastically reduce emissions of harmful substances in the air by 65 times and significantly lowered the concentration of Chromium 6 in the Chusovaya River.

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2016-12-05T05:41:00-05:00http://www.irishcentral.com/culture/entertainment/the-older-irish-community-in-new-york-remembers-christmas-gone-by-in-ireland-video-184304371-237554371The older Irish community in NYC remembers Christmas2016-12-06T04:18:16-05:00
IrishCentral visited the Aisling Center in the Bronx, New York, in 2012 and joined the older Irish immigrants enjoying a Christmas dinner together. We asked them to tell us their memories of celebrating Christmas in Ireland before they emigrated to the US. Their memories of Ireland at Christmas recall old traditions such as the “wren boys” singing carols, to what presents Santa would bring. Back then, if you were lucky, you would get a toy or some fruit, and of course, Santa had to deal with many more hand me downs as dolls passed from little girl to little girl.

For the most part, their memories are of family togetherness, mucking in and having fun at home, what Christmas is all about! Decorations and to be made and everybody pitched in with the cooking.

As we get ready for the occasion and the crazy shopping season, it's sometimes nice to sit down and remember that it wasn't always the fancy gifts that ensured you had a great Christmas but the people you shared those gifts with. This video will remind you of just that, as well as all the old traditions you may have let slip.

Do you have an old Irish tradition that you and your family carry out religiously every Christmas? Let us know about it in the comments section, below.

Share your favorite Christmas memories with us in the comments section.

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2016-12-05T05:27:00-05:00http://www.irishcentral.com/opinion/niallodowd/game-changer-norwegian-airlines-and-their-ryanair-like-impactGame changer! Norwegian Airlines and their Ryanair-like impact on US/Ireland flights2016-12-05T19:10:50-05:00
The Vikings are Coming!

Norwegian Air International Limited doesn’t sound like an entity that has much to do with Ireland. However, Friday’s announcement that the airline will fly Ryanair-type flights to America from Ireland at low costs has the potential to completely upset the cozy group of airlines who currently keep prices high on the route.

Introductory fares of $69 have been published which, no doubt, will be snapped up by bargain-seeking airline passengers, currently paying many multiples of that.

While the current plan is to fly to Cork and Shannon from Boston and New York, that could greatly expand if it proves a successful venture. The news has been received with huge enthusiasm in Ireland.

Speaking at the Irish Consulate in New York, Irish leader Enda Kenny enthusiastically gave a thumbs up to the new service. He said the decision would "do for long-haul travel what Ryanair have done for short-haul travel.”

Anyone who has traveled between Ireland and Britain can certainly testify to that. Ryanair fly from Heathrow, Stansted, Luton and Gatwick in the greater London area at prices that are hard to believe at first. By yardstick of passengers carried, 100 million last year alone, Ryanair is now the largest airline in the world. They started in 1985 with one small internal route in Ireland.

Norwegian with its aggressive expansion plans may be joining the world rankings soon enough. Their entry to Ireland has certainly been welcomed.

Niall McCarthy, Managing Director at Cork Airport said: “This is momentous news for air travelers on both sides of the Atlantic. It’s great news for Open Skies and for consumer choice and competition. I firmly believe this will permanently transform the transatlantic market in Ireland and further afield for the better. Norwegian will do for transatlantic travel what Ryanair has done for European travel, bringing lower fares, increased competition and growth to the overall market.

“There has been a tremendous amount of work undertaken to secure this route on both sides of the Atlantic and we must acknowledge the huge support received from political, business and local government stakeholders in Ireland, the EU and U.S. The final stages of the process have seen a significant contribution and support from the public too and I want to thank everyone who helped make this happen.

“These flights will help grow inbound tourism, give Cork Airport’s passengers greater choice, attract more investment to the region and improve social and cultural ties between Ireland and the U.S. We expect Boston bound flights to take off in coming months with New York flights beginning soon afterwards. Securing a transatlantic service for Ireland’s second largest airport has been an aspiration of ours for some time and Norwegian Air’s service will be welcomed by business and leisure travelers throughout the region.”

Of course the airline pilots union has complained bitterly about Norwegian. Ryanair faced the same hostility when they started up but proved that cheap, safe, efficient no-frills flying is what consumers want.

It has long been the desire of Irish in America and Ireland for a Ryanair type airline on the North Atlantic route. Currently, despite 28 flights total a day from airlines such as Aer Lingus, American Delta, United, Ethiopian Air, there are little variances in fare. The only exception is WOW, an Icelandic carrier that however, stops off in Iceland for a lengthy period on the way.

Norwegian fly brand new Boeing 787 Dreamliner planes, 20 percent more fuel efficient than their rivals which allows them to offer far lower fares. Any suggestion that the planes are battered charter type operations vanishes the moment you see the slickness of the new planes.

I happened to fly Norwegian to London last week and was impressed with the quietness of the 787, the enlarged windows which make for much better viewing and enjoyment of flight and the no frills, but perfectly adequate services available on board.

You can upgrade to premium economy which costs about $200 dollars more and makes a profound difference in terms of leg space, sleeping ability as the seats tilt back, and better food

Norwegian's motto is “Affordable Fares for All” and some of their top priorities according to their web site are:• Attract customers by offering competitive low fares and a quality travel experience• Maintain low operating costs, operational excellence and helpful, friendly service• Offer "Freedom to choose": a core low-cost product as well as a more comprehensive package for those who desire more• Offer high-frequency business destinations to primary airports and a wide range of destinations for leisure travelers

If they succeed they will revolutionize air travel from Ireland to the U.S. and send prices tumbling as Irish leader Enda Kenny has said.

The term “game changer” comes to mind. Amazing it took a Nordic airline around since 1921 to set the stage for massive change. It can only be good for consumers.

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2016-12-04T08:27:00-05:00http://www.irishcentral.com/guinness-videos/what-makes-guinness-flavour-so-special-videoWhat makes Guinness’ flavor so special (VIDEO)2016-12-05T19:09:57-05:00Guinness brewers discuss the balance of sweetness, bitterness, and roast character that is crucial to the taste of Guinness Draught Stout.

A little history: Launched in 1959, Guinness Draught Stout is the world's first-ever nitro beer. For our first 200 years, most Guinness was sold by the bottle, but in the 1950s there was increasing demand for a draught version of Guinness. However, our stout was far too lively to be dispensed with standard C02. So after nearly 10 years of research led by mathematician-turned-brewer Michael Ash, Guinness developed a way to draught beer using nitrogen. In just a few years, Draught Stout became the most popular Guinness beer. This nitrogen infusion is what gives Draught Stout its legendary head, creamy mouth feel and cascading surge-and-settle effect.

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2016-12-05T05:37:00-05:00http://www.irishcentral.com/opinion/others/hard-times-as-community-life-fades-for-older-folk-in-irelandHome Alone as community life fades for older folk in Ireland2016-12-05T19:11:13-05:00“Get yourselves permanent pensionable jobs,” our mother said to us, back in the 1940s. She said it to us as we studied for the County Scholarship. She said it to us as we moaned about having to cycle three miles into the secondary school every day. And she said it to us the day we got our good Leaving Cert. results. I joined the Civil Service. Mary became a national school teacher, Tom became a priest and P.J. stayed at home to farm the land.

Now we are all in our seventies and living in the four provinces of Ireland. Mary came out best. She worked her whole life, teaching in her local national school, in Dublin. John, her husband was the bank manager. Both have mighty pensions. Their days are full with bridge, golf, foreign holidays and their local ‘active age group’.

God help us, but I feel I’m too young to join an active age group and they’re too active for me anyway! I had to give up my good job when I married and moved to County Cork. (There was no marriage ban then for national school teachers, like our Mary.) I’m on a widow’s pension this two years and it’s not great. But I make do. I say my prayers and ask God to bless my children, who have no faith at all. Who are they going to turn to when they have troubles, I ask you?

I’m so glad that I live in a village. I can walk to Mass every morning, meet my friends and have a chat. We’re terrible sorry that our post office, garda station and little shop have closed down. Now we have to walk out to the petrol station to buy anything, and everything comes in packs holding far too much for us. “Glory be to God,” Dinny Murphy said yesterday. “I remember when you could go into O’Gormans and buy one egg, one firelighter and one fag!” Cathleen remembers when cigarettes were in your face on the counter and we all smoked. “Now, sez she, “It’s condoms that are in your face and the cigarettes are hidden.”

The free travel is great. I go up to Dublin to see my grandchildren very often and visit Mary, if she’s not gone off again on another cruise! Her children can Skype her anytime no matter where she is, which is mighty. I’m afraid I’m no good at all at this ‘social media’. The local school here had a week for us pensioners to go in and get lessons from the transition year students. We went in, four of us. God help me, but I tried. I really did. “Glory be to God,” sez Dinny. “But this is way beyond me, I give up.” And he and I did.

Peggy persevered and she can now email their two daughters below in New Zealand. She uses the computer in the library. We get the free bus to town on a Friday and she goes there. I get my hair done and buy my Buckfast Tonic Wine.

The free bus is great, absolutely great for people who live in isolated areas because it collects you from your own house and leaves you back there again. We hope the government won’t stop funding it.

Poor P.J. would be lost without it. Our old farm is five miles from the main road, above in Connemara. His car is long gone with there being no money in farming anymore. He’s right lonesome, I’d say.

The little pub near him closed down last year. With the ban on drink driving no one can use their cars to go for their few pints anymore. P.J. used to cycle to the pub and have a glass o’ stout. Mary says “It’s the chat he misses most.” I agree, and even if they sat and said nothing at all – sure wasn’t it a bit of company for him?

Mary used to be on at him to write to The Knock Marriage Bureau. “Say you have a farm and your own house,” she told him. “You’ll be snapped up.” He never got around to writing to them. He has the telly, which is good and a free license for it from the government. He has a fuel allowance too, so he’ll not be cold. Mind you there is no shortage of turf beyond in Connemara, so he’ll stay warm.

The free bus picks him up at his door every Wednesday and takes him to the little town. The bus calls to most of the houses in the area collecting his elderly neighbors. I gather that they have great chats on the journey into town and great catching up on news. They go to the bookies and the bar, or wherever they like.

But it’s our poor Tom I feel most sorry for. There he is, an old priest in his mid-seventies above in a parish in Sligo. At this age of his life he expected he’d be retired with a couple of young curates running the show. Not at all, sure the poor man still has to do it all by himself. And he’s lonely, in that big parochial house by himself, with little comfort in it.

Mammy was right. Mary, who was able to keep her ‘permanent pensionable job’ is the best off of the four of us. But, sure, aren’t we well and healthy, and you know yourself, isn’t that the most important thing of all. With the help of God we’ll stay this way for the next while.

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2016-12-02T14:21:00-05:00http://www.irishcentral.com/news/irish-echo/why-do-republicans-win-they-play-by-a-different-set-of-rulesWhy do Republicans win? They play by a different set of rules 2016-12-05T19:11:14-05:00
Political correctness is in the eye, ear and mind of the beholder. For example, it wouldn’t likely be hard to find someone who in 2015 got bent out of shape over the answer to the clue “police van” in the New York Times crossword and in 2016 voted for Donald Trump. I’m guessing that most Irish-born people, of which I’m one, would be amused at the idea of a kerfuffle over “paddy wagon.” However, there’s little agreement on what constitutes “political correctness gone mad.”

It hasn’t helped that sections of the media have circulated examples in the category that are entirely or largely fictional. The peculiar thing about the issue is that it’s been progressives and liberals who’ve fought censorship and historically pushed against the boundaries of the “safe spaces” of their day. And they still do -- Bill Maher continues to pursue the themes of his earlier show “Politically Incorrect” and Stephen Colbert mocks the “PC police.”

How come, then, conservatives use the charge with such apparent effectiveness? Well, a labor official, I believe it was, suggested an interesting intellectual exercise: substitute the word “respect” for “politically correct.”

Would you say someone is being “too respectful” when discussing a person or group? You see, in this country, the PC charge is most often used in the context of inclusivity and civility towards individuals or demographics that don’t vote Republican.

At the same time, conservatives build a wall around institutions or principles that they deem to be worthy of respect and all hell breaks loose if there’s any perceived attempt to breach it.

In 1964 LBJ posited in a TV ad that Barry Goldwater would blow up the world. The Democrats haven’t run a good one since; these days, it’s “Daisy Girl” 24/7 from the other side.

The old Clinton maxim “It’s the economy, stupid” might ordinarily have worked this year, but Hillary was running for a “third Obama term.” Maher has said that a President Romney would have happily run for a second term on the current state of the economy.

But the rules are always different with the Republicans, and their mastery of the dark arts gives them the edge.

You can’t help but admire the lack of scruples and the assault on logic. They’re joyfully shameless about it. But they’re also meaner and tougher and thus probably deserve to win as much as they do.

At a time when the GOP seemed in utter disarray at the top, Fox News kept the fire focused on the Democratic candidate and worked overtime to normalize their own. CNN and the other networks, meantime, had a vested interest ratings-wise in a close race and didn’t report important investigative work done by print and online media.

Now, we are increasingly slipping into the age of “post-truth” – which Oxford Dictionaries, in the aftermath of the Brexit and Trump upsets, has named word of the year.

Added to the problem is fake online news, which for instance was responsible for reports that both Pope Francis and Tom Hanks endorsed Donald Trump (their hopes were almost certainly in the other direction).

Back in the real world, Fox News keeps the faithful singing from the same hymn sheet, among them the kin of a prominent New York Times columnist.

Maureen Dowd told her readers about her Thanksgiving. “My little basket of deplorables, as I call my conservative family, gloated with Trump toasts galore, and Kevin presented me with his annual holiday column with an extra flourish.”

“The election was a complete repudiation of Barack Obama: his fantasy world of political correctness,” Kevin said early on in his piece for the paper of record.

Kevin Dowd is an “affluent, educated suburbanite,” in his sister’s words, and so Trump wasn’t his first choice in the primaries. But he was fully on board and on message after the nomination.

He added: “Preaching — and pandering — with a message of inclusion, the Democrats have instead become a party where incivility and bad manners are taken for granted, rudeness is routine, religion is mocked and there is absolutely no respect for a differing opinion.”

Like I said, shameless.

In Kevin’s alternative universe, no doubt, South Carolina’s Rep. Joe Wilson didn’t scream “You lie!” in the middle of an Obama address to Congress. That was Nancy Pelosi kidding around. She does a great Rebel yell, too, as part of her ventriloquist’s routine.

Kevin went on: “The rudeness reached its peak when Vice President-elect Mike Pence was booed by attendees of ‘Hamilton’ and then pompously lectured by the cast. This may play well with the New York theater crowd but is considered boorish and unacceptable by those of us taught to respect the office of the president and vice president, if not the occupants.”

Kevin, God bless him, finally found something to label “boorish” and “unacceptable” in the 2016 election season. It’s been a long 18 months for the rest of us.

In any case, the “Hamilton” cast members did not undermine the dignity of the office of vice-president. They were respectfully giving expression to the shock caused by the fact that someone with the attention span of a goldfish will have access to the nuclear button from January 20. It was also a legitimate protest against the naked use of incendiary speech by the man on the top half of the winning ticket.

Has a demagogue ever before been elected to lead a functioning Western democracy? Aren’t ordinary people, particularly those belonging to groups he’s singled out, right to be afraid?

And then there’s that wonderfully serviceable and slippery distinction between the “office” and the “occupant.”

To speak your mind and stand up for your fellow citizens is an attack on the institution your grandparents revered. But to promote the idea without evidence that the democratically-elected president of the United States (with clear majorities of the popular vote in 2008 and 2012) is secretly a Muslim and illegible because he was born on another continent – yeah, that’s just taking issue with the occupant.

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2016-12-05T14:24:00-05:00http://www.irishcentral.com/travel/travel-tips/washington-dc-park-named-after-irish-patriot-and-rebelWashington DC park named after Irish patriot and rebel2016-12-05T05:41:56-05:00A park in Washington DC is to be named after the 19th century Irish patriot and rebel hero Robert Emmet. Reservation 302, as it’s currently known, is a small triangular park on Massachusetts Avenue and has been home to an imposing statue of the executed Dubliner for the past 50 years. The statue was originally lent to the park by the Smithsonian Institute in 1966 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Easter Rising – whose leaders drew inspiration from Emmet’s failed efforts to end British rule in Ireland in 1803 – and has remained there ever since.

The statue was rededicated in April as part of the local Irish community’s effort to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Rising. It was at that time that formal efforts to get the park named after Emmett began.

One man involved in the push was Peter Kissel, who told IrishCentral, “It’s been a long-standing effort and it’s been from a coalition of people; the Ancient Order of Hibernians and the Irish American Unity Caucus. The effort has been spearheaded by Jack O’Brien who has been a member of both organizations.”

“Robert Emmet is the ultimate Irish patriot and martyr who has inspired literally generations of people advocating Irish freedom – particularly the 1916 rebels – and he made a very famous, iconic speech from the dock before he was executed by the English.”

The National Capital Memorial Advisory Commission approved the park's new name last month, without any objections, and it is now under consideration by Congress.

Kissel is optimistic about the bill’s passage, saying, “The House [of Representatives] has already approved it and we expect the Senate to pass it this week or next.”

And as to whether the park can look forward to a formal naming ceremony, they haven’t quite got that far yet, “To tell you the truth we’ve been working so hard to get Congress to approve the legislation that we have not yet focused on when we’ll have an actual naming ceremony but probably in the spring.”

Robert Emmet was born in 1778 into a Protestant family in Dublin that supported the American Revolution. When he was 25 he was intimately involved in a failed rebellion against British rule in 1803. The rebellion failed and he was captured and tried for treason; his speech from the dock remains one of the greatest Irish speeches of all time, but it did not save his life and he was hanged the next day. He remains to this a source of inspiration to Irish nationalists across the world.

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2016-12-05T05:35:00-05:00http://www.irishcentral.com/travel/travel-tips/dublin-is-one-of-the-best-places-to-ring-in-the-new-year-says-conde-nast-travelerDublin is one of the best places to ring in the New Year, says Condé Nast Traveler 2016-12-05T05:39:54-05:00
New Year's Eve is fast approaching and if you don’t yet have plans, you might want to consider celebrating the start of 2017 in Dublin. According to a new video from Condé Nast Traveler, Ireland's capital is one of the best places to ring in the New Year. Before your midnight revels, they suggest day tripping and a stop at the Guinness Factory.

Travel search engine Kayak.com has also listed Dublin as one of the top ten trending cities around the globe to celebrate the New Year in its newly released Travel Hacker Guide for the holiday season. The capital city came in number six on the list.

The guide’s ‘hacker tip’ for the city states: “The Procession of Light from St. Stephen's Green to Dublin Castle on New Year's Eve offers a moment of reflection before the pub-fueled revelry begins.”

According to CNTraveler, there has been a 65 percent increase in flight searches to the city compared to previous New Year’s Eve. The site recommends: “Road-tripping from the capital to the Cliffs of Moher, strolling the capital’s creative quarter, tipping back a few with locals at the Bar With No Name.”

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2016-12-05T05:30:00-05:00http://www.irishcentral.com/news/irishvoice/the-wonderful-jackie-kennedy-natalie-portman-s-role-of-a-lifetime-videosThe wonderful Jackie Kennedy, Natalie Portman’s role of a lifetime (VIDEOS)2016-12-04T08:48:09-05:00On the eve of Donald Trump’s presidency, a remarkable new film takes us back to an altogether different era, that of President John F. Kennedy and his young, soon to be a widow bride. Cahir O’Doherty reviews Jackie, the powerful new film starring Natalie Portman as the iconic first lady in the hours and days after the assassination that shook the world.

Everyone told Jackie Kennedy she was risking her life. The world’s gone mad, they warned her - if someone can shoot your husband in broad daylight they can shoot you too.

On the day before her husband’s funeral, her security experts told her she would be a fool to think of walking behind the funeral carriage for eight long city blocks. Think of all the exposed windows and rooftops, they told her. A bullet might have your name on it.

But Jackie’s answer to all this hand wringing was as steely as her character: the president of the United States has died, she said, and we will morn him.

History shows her decision was the right one, because everyone who had access to a television set that day watched the event from start to finish. It was as big a moment in the nation’s story as the death of Lincoln or the moon landing. The country came to a complete standstill.

But as Oscar winning actress Natalie Portman reminds us in Jackie, the powerful new film about the tragic first lady that opens this Friday, there was a human being under all that poise and position.

And Portman, 35, shows us what it cost her subject to keep the flame of Camelot – her mythical name for her husband’s all too brief presidency – burning the way it still does in Arlington Cemetery.

In director Pablo Larrain’s flawlessly directed film he keeps the camera close to his subject so we see what Jackie sees, and the effect is revelatory.

The film begins a week after the shocking assassination with Jackie, then aged 34, giving her famous Life magazine interview to Theodore H. White. As portrayed by Portman, she is utterly heart shot, still reeling from the shock, still incandescently furious but fully aware that she’s become the custodian of her husband’s legacy.

On the day of the shooting, the film reminds us, she has stand next to Lyndon B. Johnson as he is quickly sworn in as president, with her husband’s blood still fresh on her dress. No wonder she was as furious as the film shows us.

With her Brahmin background and her debutante’s flair, alongside her beauty, Jackie was an instant fashion icon. The film reminds us just how central the couple was to the style and social transformations of the 1960s, clearly foreshadowed by the presence of Robert F. Kennedy, played in the film with a lovely wounded authenticity by Peter Sarsgaard.

What many people don’t recall now is just what an affront an Irish Catholic president was to the old money ascendancy class and much of the South. Visiting priests and Mass being said within the legendary building appalled many of Kennedy’s detractors in ways that are broadly similar to the way even the idea of an African American president has in our own time.

To their detractors the Kennedy fortune was considered deeply suspect. Their politics and their strong belief in social justice and civil rights enraged their opposition and much of the country.

Jackie expertly reproduces the fault lines that inflamed the passions of all those who hated the Kennedys, but the film is never preachy or didactic. Instead it recreates the full complexity of that extraordinary before and after moment in history that changed the country and the world.

Portman's a shoo-in for an Oscar nomination for her work, the strongest of her career. She nails the old world Brahmin accent, she reproduces the stiffly formal finishing school walk, but better than all of that, she rescues Jackie, the thinking, breathing woman, from Jackie the myth, a testament to the level of artistry her portrait took.

If there is a more vulnerable image than that pink dress and pill box hat as Jackie steps off Air Force One in Dallas on that fateful day in November 1963 you’ll be hard pressed to find it.

Portman, like Jackie, reminds us that history doesn’t often announce itself while it’s in the process of unfolding. Instead she gives us all the confusion and shock that leads up to the moment, and then away from it.

America changed the day Kennedy was killed. Arguably its brightest moment in a hundred years turned nightmarish and set the stage for all the conflicts to come that decade and all that followed: Vietnam, the civil rights battles, the assassinations of reformist leaders.

“We were beautiful but that’s not enough,” Bobby Kennedy tells her, reeling from the awareness that his brother’s great work still lay ahead and was taken from him by an assassin’s bullet.

In the film Jackie grapples with hard questions of her own. Where was God when her husband was shot, she asks her Irish American priest (played by John Hurt)? That crisis of faith in a benign deity mirrors her deeper crisis of faith in the political landscape that surrounds her.

But more than anything, Jackie reminds us how much of her husband’s legacy was shaped by his widow. In her interview with Life’s Theodore H. White she refers to the musical the president loved, Camelot.

“Let it never be forgot, for one brief shining moment there was a Camelot…” she tells the reporter; giving him his headline and her husband his greatest and most enduring epitaph.

Critics have for decades tried to portray Jackie as an empty-headed debutant. Even some members of the Kennedy family have taken similar cracks over the years. It’s nonsense, and the film makes this clear.

By taking charge of every aspect of her husband’s funeral she gave the nation and history the story that they will tell of her husband’s dazzling and ultimately tragic presidency from now till the end of time.

One scene makes her resolve clear. Riding with Bobby Kennedy in the back of the ambulance that contains her husband’s coffin on the day of the shooting, Jackie rolls down the window and asks the driver if he knows who James Garfield was. The driver says he doesn’t.

Then Jackie turns to the nurse seated opposite her and asks her if she knows who William McKinley was. The nurse says no. He final question is do they know who Abraham Lincoln was, and they both nod yes. In that moment we understand that she has decided that a major funeral will be held in her husband’s honor.

It almost seems remarkable that a film this solemn and serious could be made in this new era of reality TV presidents. Jackie, like her husband John a member of what Tom Brokaw memorably called the Greatest Generation, seems like an emissary from a lost era of maturity and grit.

You’ll want to cheer as she defies the forces that try to consign her husband’s life and work to a footnote of history. It’s because she understood better than anyone what a foundational challenge he was to the centuries of ascendancy tradition in the North (including the criminal underworld) and the civil rights resisting good old boys who despised him in the south. She refuses to go quietly.

For years, decades after that fateful day in November, people would approach Jackie and say, “Oh, I’m so sorry, I remember where I was that day.” Rarely did they ever realize that so did Jackie.

In the eyes of most Americans she had become not just a person but an icon. She had also become a story and it was a sad one.

Jackie successfully rescues her from her own towering myth, and everyone who cares about American democracy should see it and reflect on the lessons she still has to teach us.